What started as a rarity has become increasingly endemic: the disastrous Marriott renovations. I can't be alone in thinking that these new bathrooms are a disaster. Just to be clear, I am talking about
these.
The reliable old Speakman showerhead of generations yore and the slightly more recent but still functional (if lower pressure) Kohler are being replaced with fancy looking - but functionally worthless - Moen "eco-performance" shower head. While it may perhaps work in new-builds with very high ceilings, I feel like no one at Marriott has actually used one of these shower heads in a typical legacy Marriott.
These new shower heads are rains shower. Rain shower heads work on one (or both) of two principles: either you spray a ton of water down (which will never happen at a hotel in today's cost conscious and faux eco-friendly world) or you rely on height to allow water droplets to form an accelerate to create the feeling of water pressure. This is very different than traditional pressure and aerated shower heads that rely on smaller streams pushed out of the showerhead at high pressure to create a satisfying shower. Aerated showerheads add air into the water to further create a sensation of higher pressure, and there are many showerheads in the same flow rate (1.5 gpm) as the new Moen eco-performance showerhead being installed in the new bathrooms that have great reviews and provide a great shower experience.
So, in theory, a 1.5 gpm rainshower waterhead could work - with a big if. The big if is that there
must be enough height to allow water droplets to form and accelerate. Typical rainshower install guides say that there should be a
minimum of one foot from the shower head to the height of the person using it (with even higher - 18" - being ideal). This is why rainshower showerheads - when properly installed - are typically ceiling mounted, especially if there are any height clearance issues. This does, of course, require some costly water-line replumbing. And, in some hotels, the ceiling is just not high enough to support a rainshower waterhead (at least without redoing the ceiling drywalling).
95th percentile design principles instruct to accommodate people in the 95th percentile when you do your design. The 95th percentile height for men in the United States is about 6'2" or 74". This means that rainshower showerheads should be mounted at a minimum of 86" inches with higher being ideal.
So far I have stayed at two hotels with these new showerheads - the SF Marriott Marquis and the Santa Clara Marriott. Both are older builds which means that ceiling height is limited. Rather than reroute the plumbing to at least maximize the available height, they simply use the existing plumbing and against the vertical wall. And the heights of the showerheads? At the Santa Clara Marriott, the height - in multiple rooms - from the floor is about
71 inches. It is literally below the top of someone's head. While the old showerheads were about this high as well, they were of the old type which meant pressure at the source - and not pressure from droplet formation and gravity. The San Francisco Marriott is better, with a height of about 78", but still well below what design standard would indicate.
For anyone over 6', the experience in these showers is
terrible. There is no feeling of water pressure at all because there is no pressure at the source and droplets haven't formed and accelerated. I am used to low-flow hotel showerheads, and the experience in these showers is worse than showerheads that run at half the water rate (like the terrible .8 GPM Aloft showerheads).
There
is a high pressure showerhead attachment, but in terrible design fashion, you can't raise it very high because it is literally blocked by the rainfall showerhead. The maximum height you can raise it to at the Santa Clara Marriott - for example - is about 66". This is below elbow shoulder height. The only way to make it work is to remove the rainfall showerhead - likely causing damage because that strips the teflon tape - and raising it up higher. And, of course, since it is an attachment rather than a true showerhead, the spread of the flow is not very satisfying because it is very narrow.
Whoever moved forward with this design - both at Marriott corporate as well as the franchisees that agreed to implement this design in hotels that simply
don't have the ceiling height to support it and/or did not want to reinvest in relocating plumbing lines - are insanely tone deaf and focused far too much on creating aesthetically pleasing designs that look high end than functional. I imagine that anyone that is away from home 200+ nights a year like me cares more about functionality than pretty aesthetics.
Just to drive this point home and hopefully make it clear I am not exaggerating, here's a picture of me standing next to a showerhead at the Santa Clara Marriott. I am 6' 4". This is not a particularly bad example: all rooms in the North and South towers have the same height (I have checked and confirmed with the hotel).
