The first picture below is the basin as fitted to my parents’ ‘special care’ bathroom by Dolphin. It has a number of features that are clearly inappropriate and dangerous in a disabled bathroom.
It has a chain and plug, rather than a pop-up waste, but most significantly, it has no mixer. I asked Dolphin Special Care™ if they could supply a mixer tap, which seemed to me to be optimal. They said that they could not, and in any case didn’t recommend the use of mixer taps in disabled bathrooms. I yielded to their ‘better wisdom’, but wish I hadn’t.
Dolphin told me that the water supply to my parents’ bathroom would be temperature-limited. But they then neglected to fit temperature-limiting valves. After they left the property, it was possible to run water out of the hot tap at over 60° (Celsius). Human skin breaks down above 55°. Scalding can kill the elderly; usually, through shock — not of the scalding, but due to the immune response at losing significant amounts of the body’s largest organ, the skin.
The basin as fitted by Dolphin permitted water at either a scalding 64° (from the hot tap) or 9° (from the cold) to be delivered to the basin. You can also note in the photograph that the length of the tap-spout is so short that the water barely dribbles down the side of the basin.
The second photo below is the basin that I have bought to replace Dolphin’s parent-scalding one. It was photographed before it was fitted. You’ll note that it has a pop-up waste, and a mixer with a spout that can move out of the way.
Interestingly, the new basin cost me £91 and the new taps, £100.
To have Dolphin Special Care™ fit their manifestly useless and dangerous alternative cost me about £1,000. Be warned.
Click on either picture below to open it full-size.