When I arrived at the Hutton Hotel in Nashville for the PASS Board meeting recently they couldn’t find my reservation. Customer service person number one handed me off to person number two, then to number three, and finally number four. I didn’t have the confirmation number handy and in fact had not made the reservation myself, so I was patient – could have been my fault somehow. Eventually they just decided to find me a room and in the process upgraded me to a suite. Later I found how it was a data entry problem, I had been entered as last name comma first name, so a query for first or last name just didn’t match. Strange but true!

It’s a fairly modern hotel, when you enter the room to get the lights to come on you have to put your door card in a reader inside the room, then when you leave you remove it and a few minutes later the lights go off automatically. Flat screen tv, easy to reach power ports, all good stuff.

But the shower was the best part of the trip. Not just any shower, one with electronic controls! I took the two photos to show you, the second one after I realized I forgot to get a picture of it in progress and since I had already removed the door card, the lights went out before I could get the second pic in normal light.

Press power, click OK, watch the temperature start at 75 or so degrees and sit for a few seconds, then it starts to climb up to the default on this of 103 degrees. Twist the dial on the right to change the temp. It’s got six pre-sets, and each of them will store not just temperature buy settings for multiple shower heads if you have them (sadly, only one here).

Most hotels have those very green and not very fun water saving shower heads. Not here. This was a ceiling mounted high volume shower, far better than I have at home. Not quite a fire hose, but definitely moving a lot of water. Combined with the pure geek fun of the shower controls was just excellent. The only strange part is that the controls are outside the shower, you have to step out and around the door to change the temperature. I think a sacrifice worth making for this combo!

Thinking this is something to put on the list for when we get around to the next home renovation (along with multiple shower heads so that don’t have to do the turn in a circle shower dance). Looked it up online and I think it’s the Kohler K-683. Not clear if is only the controls, controls plus valves, and whether it’s also a tank-less heater or not, but you can get it online for….$800 or so. Holy cow, $800?

Would I spend that much? Going to have to think on that one. It’s nice, but not sure that nice. A bathroom renovation not cheap, would it make sense to spend an extra $700 or so over what the usual controls cost? Will a lightening strike fry it? At $200 would do it in a minute. At $800? Hmmm. Don’t know!