We have a roman tub and often want to be able to use a hand shower; our tub only has hot and cold taps, but no built-in hand shower. For years we've been using one of those cheap hand shower attachments that has a large rubber mouth that slips over the bathtub spout. The old one more or less worked, though we had to be careful to keep the water flow low so that water didn't come spraying out from the spout attachment. It was also a pain to attach and remove it from the spout; so, we typically left the rubber mouth attached to the spout and pulled out the hand shower's hose when we weren't using it. Well, recently the rubber started cracking on the old attachment and I needed to replace it. After having searched at retail stores and on the Web over the past year, it became clear that there were no better hand shower solutions that didn't involve major surgery to the existing tub. So we tried the same solution yet again. However, the new attachment was far worse than what we had become used to, with water spraying pretty much every time we used the hand shower.

Going back to the home improvement stores, I finally worked out a solution that:
- is easy to construct and install
- is more attractive (when the hand shower isn't attached) than the old solution (refer to the figure in the next step)
- is more solid/robust that the old solution
- doesn't spray out water at the tub spout
- allows the hand shower to be very easily attached and removed
- allows for full, unobstructed water flow while the hand shower is detached from the tub spout

The parts are inexpensive and should be fairly easy to locate at home improvement stores (such as, say, Home Depot); I ended up buying my parts at one of Canada's RONA stores.

Step 1: The Old Solution

Step 2: Materials

My tub's spout had a 15/16" male-threaded aerator. I needed to find a male snap adapter (quick-connect) that matched. I then found a matching female snap adapter with male threading for a standard garden hose. From that point onward, it simply becomes a garden hose assembly job.

Here are the parts I used:

- 15/16" male-threaded, male chrome plated brass dishwasher snap adapter (ULN 406 in the figures).
- Female chrome plated brass dishwasher snap adapter to match ULN 406 (ULN 407 in the figures).
- 1/2" garden hose (I found some white marine/RV hose that had chrome
plated fittings. Too bad I could only use one end. A clear/transparent length
of hose might be another good choice.)
- 1/2" female hose coupling (I was lucky to find one that had the same blue/white
colour scheme as the hose).
[- optional] 1/2" male hose couple. (This is only needed if your length of garden
hose doesn't already have one--such as if I ever needed to make a new
hand shower, or repair the current one.)
- A shower head attachment. (I chose an aluminum fan spray shown in
the last two figures. Lucky for me, RONA makes their own and their company
colours again matched the hose.)
- Some thread seal tape (sometimes called plumber's tape or, incorrectly, Teflon tape)

Step 3: Installation

Installation is pretty straightforward.

1) Unscrew the aerator from the tub's spout.
2) Wrap some thread seal tape around the threads of the male snap adapter and screw it tightly into the spout.
3) Cut the garden hose to a suitable length, leaving the female fitting intact.
4) Attach the hose to the female snap adapter and tighten securely.
5) Attach the female hose coupling to the cut end of the hose.
6) Attach the shower head.
7) Pull back the white ring on the female snap adapter to attach or remove the hand shower from the tub's spout.

I hope you find this instructable useful.

Cheers