INTERVIEWWITH GROHE Q&A Lewis Neathey
Grohe
BKU caught up with Lewis Neathey, Leader Product Management, GROHE UK.
BKU: Can you talk us through the concealed shower frame and how it’s installed? Lewis: The concealed shower frame is everything you need to install a concealed shower in one place. On-site the walls often aren’t straight, the floors are wonky, etc. which can sometimes make installing a concealed shower quite difficult. But with our frame, you put the bottom part in first with adjustable feet so that you can level against a wonky floor and make sure that the controls are level. Then you put the second part on top to get the rest of the technology in there. After that you install the hot and cold water
straight up into the bottom - everything else is already pre-plumbed and pre-tested, so you know that it’s all going to work. It comes height adjustable, and you can also adjust the depth. So, when you’re putting it into the stud you can either attach it from the sides or into a brick wall or concrete wall behind with fixings. One of the benefits of this is peace of mind,
because when you’ve got a concealed product, you don’t want to be going back to a job and trying to fix a leak. Everything is already tested and checked, so you know that it’s all going to work first time.
It comes with our Grohe Rapido Smart Box,
which is our universal valve, which means you can put any Grohe control on the front, and you know that it’s going to work - so you don’t need to pick the controls first - you can do that after the first fix. We think it’s a really great product; I’m super-excited to launch it at the show today, and we’re looking forward to getting some great feedback from installers about using it.
BKU: Can you elaborate a bit more about some of Grohe’s concealed solutions? Lewis: Concealed products are really popular at the moment; they’re easy to clean and look great. Consumers sometimes get a bit nervous about putting things in behind a wall, and understandably - it’s going to be sealed up by tiles or whatever finish they put on it, and if anything goes wrong, it’s quite costly to then rectify and go back in and fix it. Grohe has a long history of working with these
products, and it’s just clever things that we do... for instance, you can get all of the internal components of a system out through a hatch and can service the system. Every single component can come out through that hatch and be exchanged and swapped over. From a consumer’s
BKU: Tell us about the new Sensia Pro Toilet. Lewis: Grohe has a parent company called LIXIL, which is a Japanese company. As you can imagine, they have a lot of expertise in this type of product, so this is one of my favourites because it combines the German quality engineering message with the Japanese technology specialist features. A shower toilet is a toilet combined with a bidet. The product has lots of different features: there’s a nightlight in there, there’s an automatic lid which comes up and down as you approach it, and it comes with a remote control. You’ve got rear wash, and then you’ve also got a separate nozzle which is for the ladies. You have different settings on the position, intensity of the spray and the temperature. It’s warm water, and you’ve got an oscillating spray on both of those so it can move backwards and forwards to give you a different experience. There are three presets to choose from, so you might have a specific setup which is great for you, but your partner might like things in a very different way. It’s becoming a more popular product,
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particularly as hygiene is such a big focus in the UK now.
BKU AUGUST 2024 43
perspective, that gives you peace of mind that everything can be fixed without having to break the tiles or go back in behind the wall. And from an installer’s perspective, it means that with the small chance you do have to go back to the job, at least you know you can still get in there without having to cause a lot of disruption and time.
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