Adding a Moen Shower.... in the UK!
This is two different products I've installed here. A Moen TS3302TB (2 Valve Smart Shower) and a Nebia by Moen Quattro, which is designed to minimise water usage.
I bought both of these when I was living in the USA and they were supposed to be part of a bathroom renovation. However, I moved to the UK and brought them with me.
Generally, I'd say that this is something that you would normally do during a renovation but, in my case, there is a removable panel behind my shower wall, so it could be done after the fact.
Please do not critique my carpentry skills. I'm a great technologist, but crap carpenter.
Physical Installation
First of all the S3102, which is a Digital Thermostatic Shower 2 valve (They do a 4 valve one as well). The controller has to be paired with the valve... so pay attention.
I already had the lower cross member in the wall, so just had to add the upper one. Then you just screw it in place.
Now comes the fun for the UK. The North American and, basically, the rest of the world standards are different. Both the UK and North America refer to ½", but the UK is 15mm and North America is 15.8mm, so I needed 4 x 15mmm to 16mm straight through connectors to convert from British Pipes to the American inlets and from the American outlets to the British pipe leading to the shower.
The 2nd outlet is actually blanked off, but will be used at a later date when I change the bath and then have a spout sticking out of the wall rather than 2 taps (Faucets to Americans) actually on the bath.
There's another quirk about converting from North American to UK.... we have our hot and cold taps on different sides.
So this led to spaghetti plumbing where the pipes literally swapped over.
We also took the opportunity to put in some shut off valves, as you can see.
Not only that, when I had the power put in, I had a double socket installed so I could also put in an Eve Water Guard which has its detector cable running under the bath and the pipe work..... so not nasty surprises! This water guard is one of the 1st gen without Thread and you may notice that the cable comes out of the top, rather than the bottom. This is due to an error in manufacture of the adapter for Type G sockets which makes the device plug in upside down. If you contact Eve they will send you an extra length of cable to compensate for the lost length. Personally, I'd rather have a corrected adapter, but still I like the fact that there was no argument about it and Eve were straight on to it. The Bluetooth distance is not an issue here, as I have a HomePod mini about 3 metres away.
The Shower itself was very easy, and just required a hole in the wall so an angled wall arm could be installed, which is the norm in North America, and a smaller hole for the cable from the Digital Controller to go to the Valve. The Digital Controller can be quite a distance from the Valve, which really leads to some very flexible installation options.
Both the controller and the power are plugged in, and then the controller boots up.
<update 9th sep 2022>
I've subsequently added an Eve Energy to the socket with the power for the valve. I've found, with iOS 16's various Beta's that I'd have a lot of devices that would not reconnect, and this was also true of the shower with iOS 16.0 RC. As the power socket is behind a panel, this is a pain to unplug, so the Eve Energy makes that easier for me.
<End of update>
<update 27th March 2023>
Due to one of the major differences between UK and US water distribution, that I hadn't taken into account, we've installed a water pump. Basically, we weren't getting the pressure we needed out of the shower head. Mainly this is because in the UK water is gravity fed from a tank in the attic downwards, and in the US it is under pressure from the city.
So, we installed a Stuart Turner Showermate. This causes the hot and cold water to be under pressure and solves the issue. A 2 bar pump was sufficient for the task.
<End of update>
Controller set up
You will need the "U by Moen" App. Interestingly, this also works on my M1 MacBook Pro.
Initially, though, you set up teh shower manually, and it is pretty easy when you understand how the various buttons work during set up. HINT: RTFM!
What is rather annoying, though, is that the ONLY time zones available are from North America. Now, I know this product is North American, but they also sell it in Hong Kong, so why would you limit your software like that? I can understand making them higher on the list, but the only options? Very weird.
Whilst that is not a major problem it does mean that the clock on the display is always wrong and when it says good evening, it is actually morning for me.
Grrrrr!
It does let you choose between Centigrade or Fahrenheit though.
Now you will need the U by Moen app to get any further.
I found connecting the Shower to the app and to WiFi to be very easy. I have a blended 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz Mesh and there was no issue with connection at all. My only issue is the way it was done, which is in the app you tell it which WiFi SSID to use and password, then you have to switch your phone's WiFi to the Controller and then go back to the app, and it sets that up, then you set your phone to go back to your normal WiFi and tell the app to continue and then it completes set up. Whilst it worked, it is a bit antiquated. You can tell that Moen is not really using people who understand user friendly tech to develop their code.
So now the shower is in the app.
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Give it a few moments at this point. I did find that it automatically went out an updated the firmware without me having to tell it to do that. I do run HomeKit Secure Router, so obviously that is set up correctly.
If you click on the power button you will then see:
The 2 valves. Again, another annoying thing is that you can't define one as being unused or blocked off and, by default, both valves are operating initially, but it does remember your last setting.
When you turn on a Valve, you now see:
the temperature it is (The large one) and the target temperature (Small one). As they shower warms up, the larger number will climb until it is at the desired temperature.
At which point it will ping, and tell you your shower is ready and now you see the screen changes. I found that as the shower constantly tries to maintain the temperature it will adjust +/- 1C.... still, much better than constantly sticking your hand in to find out if it is the right temperature or not.
Unfortunately, here is where the instructions and the real world do not match.
The instructions say that when you have set up the shower, and you want to add it to add it to HomeKit, you can do it from settings. Well, no. I found that you had to power down for 10 seconds, and then power up again, and then the option appeared in Settings. This was even after a reboot after the firmware upgrade:
Then you choose the home and the room, and then you assign a shower to that room. You'll see it appear as a tap/faucet. That's slightly disappointing, but that is Apple's fault, not Moen's.
When you show controls, though, it makes more sense... especially with iOS 16 where you can now see the seperate valves, or "Shower Heads".
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| iOS 15 showing switch on and temperature |
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| iOS 16 showing the shower heads as well as on and Temperature |
If you click on settings, there is no difference between iOS 15 or iOS 16.
Operation
In a few words? Very annoying!
I can't tell Siri to turn on the shower, it says it can't find anything like that in my home. I also can't automate anything as Apple have decided you can't automate water devices.
I can't set up a Scene in Apple's Home app. You can do it in Eve's App, but nothing happens.
However, if you set up the Presets in the app, they will appear as Scene's in the Home App:
Whilst this will turn the shower on, and so you can now use the scene as part of an automation, you can't use it to turn the shower off.
I haven't yet worked out the magic incantation to tell Siri to turn the shower on/off as an accessory in the Home App, but you can use the scene to turn on the shower but, again, can't turn it off. :-(
Still, it is kind of cool to lie in bed, turn on the shower and wait for it to hit the desired temperature.
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