Take a look around your house at some of the various plumbing brands. Some of them are likely names you’ve heard of before or possibly even seen at your local Home Depot or Lowe’s. Delta, Kohler, Toto, the list goes on! If you’ve been following us on social media or here on the blog, you may have seen a post we did a few weeks ago with this same title, Who’s Who of Plumbing Brands. The reason we’ve started to do this as a blogging series is because there are simply so many plumbing brands to pick from. While plumbing professionals will certainly have their favorites and are able to provide direct recommendations, the average homeowner may feel a little overwhelmed by just how many options there are. Hence a blog post outlining some of the more reputable and reliable brands!
If this is your first time landing on our blog, welcome to Stine-Nichols Plumbing! We are a full-service plumbing contractor in Kansas City, offering residential, commercial and new construction plumbing services. We work throughout the Kansas City area, as well as all of the surrounding cities! This week’s blog will walk you through some more of our favorite plumbing brands. In the first part of this series, we highlighted Delta, Kohler, Toto and American Standard. If you would like check out that blog, click HERE.
Moen
As it says on their website, “Moen is dedicated to designing and delivering beautiful products that last a lifetime – all over the world.” We’ll kick off this week’s “Who’s Who” with Moen! Starting back in the late-1930’s, Al Moen certainly revolutionized the plumbing world when he invented the first-ever single-handle faucet. Before retiring in 1982, Moen would go on to bring about over 75 patents that greatly impacted the industry. When it comes to the Moen brand, you can always count on getting high-quality fixtures. What started as a faucet business has expanded into just about every possible plumbing device in the kitchen or bathroom, including garbage disposals! Their fixtures come in a number of different finishes to ensure you’ll have plenty of options as well!
While their top-class innovation has also led to more than a few awards and recognition, one that I wanted to highlight here is the 2020 iPhone Life Best of CES Award. For those unfamiliar with CES, it stands for Consumer Electronics Show and essentially is the perfect place for learning about cool advancements in tech! Anyways, the U by Moen Smart Faucet was presented with this award in 2020. From the voice control features to the smartphone connectivity, this really is a faucet with all of the bells and whistles! This includes being able to ask the faucet specific orders, such as:
“Ask Moen for 2 Tablespoons.”
“Ask Moen to Wash My Hands.” – This one is pretty neat, as it will wet your hands and then wait exactly 20 seconds for you to correctly apply the soap, and then produce the water.
“Ask Moen for 2 Cups at 82-Degrees.”
All in all, it’s another cool innovation that makes your life easier from one of the best in the biz!
General Electric
Having been founded in the 1890’s and being a publicly traded company, General Electric (or GE) is about as household of a name as you get! From aviation and healthcare to finance and so many others, they operate in a number of different industries and truly are a massive company! One of these ‘other’ industries is the plumbing world and really appliances, in general. In short, they’ve been around for over a century and are here to stay.
If you’ve started to notice a trend amongst many of these brands, a shared quality you’ll see revolves around innovation. Just as is the case with any other industry, it’s critical to adapt in order to avoid getting passed over by the competition. GE has been at the forefront of plenty of innovations and their most recent one involves smart appliances.
Smart water heaters, smart water softeners, smart dishwashers, kitchen hubs, you name it! To make life easier for their customers, they allow for you to control most of the features from your phone. Take the smart water heater for example. With built-in WiFi, homeowners are able to change the temperature, set vacation mode settings and adjust notifications. In the end, you’ll notice each of these brands have developed their own ways of making something ‘smart’ and ultimately more convenient for a homeowner!
Gerber
If you have young ones around the house, you might immediately think of baby food once you hear the word Gerber, but it’s actually the plumbing manufacturer that we’ll be discussing today! Founded back in 1932 by Max Gerber, this is a brand consistently known for their dependability, as well as ability to offer products at all price points.
As I mentioned above, they do offer a number of different finishes and styles to match the vision of a particular customer. They define each of these styles as an individual “collection” and on their website, they list eight collections in total. This allows a customer to guarantee every feature will blend together with the rest. Showerheads, soap dispensers, towel ring, robe hook, you name it! Affordable and reliable is a great way to define Gerber.
Grohe
Our final company that will be discussing today is Grohe, which is actually originally based out of Düsseldorf, Germany. Having been founded back in the 1930’s, it wasn’t until 1975 that Grohe decided to open an office in the United States. In comparison to some of the other brands we’ve mentioned, they are more so on the high-end side of things. Nonetheless, when you purchase a Grohe faucet or any other fixture, you are definitely getting a high-quality product! Being a European-based company as well, you’ll notice they offer a slightly different perspective on design. Having said that, if you’re struggling to find a design that catches your eye with some of the other brands, it may be wise to give a Grohe a look!
In terms of innovation, Grohe more than holds their own as well! This includes them inventing the first-ever pull-out spray kitchen faucet in 1983, as well as a variety of other smart fixtures. Before moving on, I’d like to take a minute to highlight their SmartControl functionality. If you click on the link HERE, you’ll see that this is not your average shower! At the main hub, you’re able to push a button to start and stop the water, adjust the flow style and change the temperature. Again, just another prime example of innovation at work in the plumbing world!
Thanks to Grohe for supplying the images featured in this blog’s thumbnail!
Need Some Recommendations?
We hope you enjoyed this second edition of a Who’s Who in plumbing! As you’re likely starting to see, the plumbing fixture industry is very competitive. There are so many companies that have been producing quality products for decades and some have even been doing so for over a century. In order to last that long as a business, you have to be doing something right!
If you know you need a new faucet, sink, toilet, garbage disposal, water heater or anything else plumbing-related, don’t hesitate to give us a call at 816-348-3481. We’ll be able to walk you through the different brands that are available at your particular budget and find something that fits your overall vision for the space. As always, we’re more than happy to serve anyone living in the Kansas City area, as well as all of the surrounding cities. Overland Park, Lenexa, Liberty, Parkville, Kearney, Lee’s Summit, Grandview, Independence, you name it!
Stay tuned for a look into more plumbing brands here on the blog!