Huntington Brass Faucets Review & Rating Updated: March 20, 2024
Trading as
Huntington Brass
11100 Dana Circle
Cypress, CA 90630
800-888-6604
warranty@huntingtonbrass.com
Huntington Brass
Law Requirements
Warranty Footnotes:1. Lifetime is defined for "as long as the original purchaser owns their [sic] home...."3. The company no longer offers a Polished Brass finish except as a PVD finish, so this term may be obsolete.
This Company In Brief
Afeel is one of the original Asia-Marketeers in North America, importing faucets and other sanitary wares from Taiwan years before China became a manufacturing powerhouse.
The company has traded as Huntington Brass since 2005, selling sink faucets as well as showers and tub fillers, and matching accessories primarily through internet retailers.
The Company
Afeel Corp., Inc. is a private company founded in 1989 by a group of investors from the U.S. and Taiwan headed by Huei-Link Kuan to import Taiwanese fshowers and shower accessories.
It was one of the pioneer Asian plumbing product importers along with selling olumbing wares from Asia years before China became a manufacturing powerhouse.
It was sold in 2005 to Winnie Liang, Ling-Chu Kao, and Huey-Chew Hsu who moved operations to their present location and vastly expanded products to include sink and tub faucets as well as showers and the bath accessories that go with them.
Since 2022, the company has been styling itself as "the North American headquarters for NCIP Inc." indicating yet another change in direction from wholesaler of products from several Asian manufacturers to the North American distributor of products from a single supplier — a change that has had a significant impact on its product offerings.
Joy Hsu has replaced Winnie Liang as CEO.
The Faucets
Huntington Brass products are arranged in three collections:
- The HB Pro Collection (formerly the ReliaFLO and, before that, the Professional Collection) is the economy faucet series intended for apartments, manufactured dwellings, and institutions. The HB Pro brand is so new as of this writing, that many retail sites still identify the collection as ReliaFLO.
- The Decor Collection is the company's mid-range, mid-priced collection.
- The Platinum Collection contains the company's upper-end luxury products.
Each collection contains sub-collections that the company variously calls "series" or "categories." The Decor collection, for example, contains three series at present: Euro, Sevaun, and Woodbury.
The company publishes an online catalog that includes sink faucets, tub faucets, showers, and accessories such as towel bars and toilet paper holders.
The Manufacturer
In the not too distant past, Huntington Brass faucets were made by a variety of Asian, mostly Taiwanese manufacturers.
Today, all or almost all are made by NCIP, Inc., an plumbing fittings manufacturer.
It makes over 250 faucets and other fittings in its factories owned by its subsidiary, Dahata, Inc. in China, Dahada is described n NCIP literature as the company's "production base."
Formed in Taiwan in 1979 as CIP, Inc. it began as a trading company exporting plumbing and hardware products manufactured by Taiwanese factories to buyers across the world.
It established its first factory in China in 1990 and additional factories in 1998 and 1999 to manufacture hardware products including plumbing fittings. Its headquarters is in Taiwan, but it does not manufacture in Taiwan.
The company changed its name to NCIP, Inc. in 2009.
The major shift in suppliers has resulted in a massive realignment of the array of faucets offered for sale by Huntington Brass. A lot of old favorites are gone or in the process of going, replaced by new faucets in new series.
The Decor collection, for example, has lost all of its older faucets in the Emory, McMilln, Reflrection, and Sherington series that are being or have been phased out. Some of these faucets are still listed on the company website, but are identified as "discontinued."
NCIP provides faucets that are finished and ready for sale. Afeel does not assemble them in California except for some minor attachments such as handles and aerators.
Some of the company's faucets offer various handle options, and rather than stocking a lot of the same faucet with different handles already installed, it stocks the faucet bodies and attaches the handles as ordered. This is a smart idea that cuts down on inventory.
This assembly does not amount to the substantial transformation[1] that would qualify the company as an .
Design and Styling
Huntington Brass faucet styles cover the entire range of traditional through ultra-contemporary. Most of the stylistic interest is in the upscale Platinum Collection, as one would expect.
According to the company, faucets in this collection are designed by an in-house design group.
How much of this design is true "from the ground up" design and how much is a modification of existing faucets we do not know. In the past, we have seen a few faucets in the Platinum Collection that may have been original designs, like the now discontinued Favari faucet, but we doubt they were designed by Huntington Brass.
The company simply does not display the indicia of a true designer faucet company.
Afeel owns no design patents, has not entered any faucets in international design competitions, and, as far as we can tell, has no trained designers on staff.
Nor does it charge the prices that true designer faucets command.
Customization
What it does is more accurately called customization.
Almost any manufacturer offers customization options, and that includes NCIP which advertises that …
"… our platform can provide highly customizable solutions for customers to create their own lines of faucets."
Faucet components such as spouts and handles are often interchangeable on a basic faucet, so a great many different configurations can be created without altering the mechanics of the faucet.
It is simply a matter of swapping components, sort of like ordering in a Chinese restaurant: pick a basic faucet from Column A, a spout from Column B, a handle from Column C, then select a spray head from Column D to create a distinctive faucet from the basic design.
Customization allows manufacturers to offer their wholesale customers basic faucets in many different guises so they all don't end up competing to sell the exact same faucet.
Catalog Faucets
Customized faucets, if any, are only in the company's Platinum collection. The vast majority of faucets sold by the company are faucets, straight out of the product inventories of the various Asian manufacturers that make them.
Although Asian manufacturers have begun producing original designs, some of which have won awards in international design competitions, design adventures in the Asian faucet industry are still very rare.
New designs are usually adopted from Europe and North America.
A style that sells well in these major markets will often be imitated by Asian factories (with minor changes to avoid patent infringement). The lag time is usually 3 to 5 years, so by the time a design appears in an Asian faucet, it is no longer new.
The faucets in the Decor and HB Pro collections fit this pattern. They are pleasant and often smartly styled, but most are over a decade old, some are well past voting age, and a few in the HB Pro collection are looking at their Golden Anniversary in the rear-view mirror.
Many are the same generic Asian faucet styles sold by its competitors such as
Construction & Materials
Huntington Brass faucets are made using conventional construction in which the body and spout channel water as well as give the faucet its appearance. NCIP is not yet using the newer core and shell construction. [2]
The primary materials used are brass and zinc alloys. Secondary materials are zinc alloys and plastic.
Brass
Brass is the traditional faucet material for two reasons:
- Brass is strong but easy to work with. It casts, forges, and machines with relative ease.
- Brass is naturally anti-microbial. The copper in brass kills bacteria, retarding the build-up of potentially hazardous microbes inside a faucet.
Metallic Lead
Brass has one serious drawback, however. Traditional brass contains metallic lead.
Ordinary (Alpha) brass is a blend of copper and zinc with a small amount of lead (1.5% - 3.5%) added to make the material more malleable, less brittle, and easier to fabricate.
Lead, however, is now all but banned in North America in any drinking water component due to its toxicity to humans, particularly children.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), lead, even in small amounts, causes slowed growth, learning disorders, hearing loss, anemia, hyperactivity, and behavior issues.
Before 2014, a faucet sold in the U.S. or Canada could contain as much as 8% lead and still call itself lead-free.
Now the maximum lead content of those parts of a faucet that touch water is 0.25% (1/4 of 1%), basically just a bare trace. In fact, there may be more lead in the air you breathe than there is in a faucet that has been certified lead-free.
Lead-Free Brass
To comply with the restrictions on lead, today's faucet brass replaces lead with other additives to reduce brittleness without adding toxicity. The most common is bismuth.
Bismuth is similar to lead – right next to lead on the periodic table of elements – but it is not harmful to humans.
It is, however, very expensive. It is 300 times rarer than lead, even rarer than silver, which is why bismuth-brass alloys are considerably more expensive than leaded brass.
This increased cost has encouraged many faucet manufacturers to use substitute materials where possible.
Zinc & Zinc/Aluminum Alloys
The most common substitute metal is zinc or a zinc-aluminum (ZA) alloy. One of the most common is called ZAMAK, a composition containing 4% aluminum.
Zinc is not as strong as brass and does not resist water pressure as well as brass. However, its use in non-pressurized parts of a brass faucet such as handles, base and wall plates, and is common even among manufacturers of luxury faucets.
The company's more upscale faucets are brass but may have zinc ancillary parts and trim such as handles and base plates (escutcheons) that do not experience a lot of stress.
In the HB Pro® Collection, however, some faucets are made entirely from a zinc/aluminum alloy. These are not usually identified in the faucet listing on the company website, but are described in the downloadable .pdf specification sheet as "zinc die-cast housing."
A zinc alloy faucet is fine for moderate use in, for example, an RV, laundry, or little-used powder room. For heavy use, however, brass is preferred.
Plastics
Plastic is the other commonly used substitute material. Some plastics such as ABS may be safely used in incidental parts like base plates and havw been largely trouble-free in aerators and as casings for ceramic cartridges. Delta faucet has begun using cross-linked polyethylene (PEX) for the internal waterways of its core and shell faucets in place of copper tubing, and the material is working well.
Otherwise, plastic is suspect, especially if under water pressure.
Among those suspect uses is in the spray heads of Huntington Brass kitchen faucets. Plastic spray heads (called "wands" in the faucet industry) have become the standard for many manufacturers, including some that sell upscale faucets such as so Huntington Brass is certainly not alone in its use of plastic.
Proponents of the material give three reasons for the use of plastic:
- Plastic does not get uncomfortably hot in use like metal wands;
- Plastic is not as heavy and is more comfortable to hold for long periods of time; and
- Plastic is a lot cheaper than brass or stainless steel – even cheaper than zinc.
Plastic wands, however, fail much more often than metal wands. Engineers have made significant improvements to their reliability over the past decade, and the farilure rate is not nearly what it was a decade ago. However, the problem has not been entirely solved.
The Sure Cure for Too-Hot Spray Wands: The simple cure for spray wands that get too hot is to reduce the temperature of the water. Dishes do not need to be rinsed in scalding water.
The general consensus in the industry is that better wands are made of metal, insulated against excessive heat transmission.
Faucet Components
The critical components used in Huntington Brass faucets. or any faucet for that matter, are ceramic valve cartridges and aerators.
Valve Cartridges
Its valve cartridge is the heart of a modern faucet and should be your very first consideration when making a buying decision.
It is the component that controls water flow and temperature.
Its finish may fail and the faucet will still work. It may be discolored, corroded, and ugly but water still flows.
If the cartridge fails, however, the faucet is no longer a faucet. It is out of business until the cartridge is repaired or replaced.
It's important, therefore, that the cartridge is robust, durable, and lasts for many years.
Washerless Valves
Some HB Pro collection faucets use an older technology washerless valve cartridges invented by in the 1940s. The Huntington Brass website identifies the faucets that use washerless valves.
For moderate use, there is nothing wrong with the washerless valve. It served the American faucet industry well for most of a century.
It requires periodic maintenance to replace rubber O-rings and seals, but if properly maintained can easily last a lifetime.
When a valve finally does wear out, changing it for a new valve is an easy task within the abilities of even a modest DIYer. Replacement washerless valves are widely available as are videos on how to replace them.
Huntington Brass guarantees washerless cartridges for ten years, which is, in our opinion, short-changing the expected life span of the valve.
Ceramic Cartridge Valves
Invented by ceramic valves are the latest and greatest valve technology. In place of vulnerable rubber rings and seals to control water flow, they use two nearly indestructible ceramic discs.
How to Clean a Ceramic Valve Cartridge
If your faucet starts to drip after several years, the problem is most likely in the valve cartridge.
The cartridge is probably not defective. It is just clogged up with mineral deposits accumulated over the years from hard water.
The two ceramic discs that shut the water off no longer mesh perfectly, allowing a few drops of water to slip through.
To return it to full functionality, removing the lime scale deposits is all that is required.
Here is how that can be done:
- Remove the cartridge following the instructions in your faucet manual.
- Soak the cartridge for up to 30 minutes in a solution of 50% household vinegar and 50% water.
- While you are waiting, take a toothbrush soaked in the vinegar/water mixture and clean the cavity in the faucet that holds the cartridge. Wipe it dry with a clean cloth.
- Rinse the cartridge thoroughly in clean cold water.
- Lubricate the O-ring(s) and rubber washers, if any, with silicon plumber's grease
- Reinstall the cartridge.
If the mineral build-up is substantial, you may have to do this more than once.
View a good video by Fluid on how to clean a ceramic cartridge.
The discs are so highly polished that when closed the space between them is smaller than a water molecule, so the flow of water stops. The elimination of rubber seals and rings also eliminated the nuisance of periodic replacement.
Stem Cartridges
Two-handle faucets require what are called stem cartridges
or headworks
. Each faucet requires two cartridges, one for hot water and a second for cold. They control water flow, but not temperature. Temperature mixing occurs in the sink.
Mixer cartridges required for single-handle faucets control both water flow and temperature. Temperature is mixed inside the faucet before the water exists into the sink.
Until a very few years ago, all of Huntington Brass' stem cartridges were made of brass. Today, they all appear to be ABS plastic.
Plastic is a lot less expensive than the lead-free brass required for brass cartridges, As far as we know at the moment, ABS cartridges are no less reliable.
We have no idea who makes them. Any number of Asian companies supply plastic stem cartridges and unless the cartridges include maker's marks, there is no reliable way of telling them apart. Huntington Brass valves have no marks.
We asked the company to identify its stem cartridges but received no response.
Mixing Cartridges
The ceramic valve mixing cartridges used in Huntington Brass single-handle faucets are more identifiable.
Geann Industrial Co., Ltd. seems to provide most of the cartridges.
In years past we characterized Geann as an up-and-coming technical ceramics manufacturer from Taiwan. Today it has definitely arrived, challenging the hegemony of the traditional European ceramics companies such as Kerox, Kft (Hungary) and CeramTec (Germany).
It supplies the ceramic cartridges used in faucets by major American faucet companies like among others. Waterstone was one of the first of the luxury faucet manufacturers to adopt Geann cartridges, raising a lot of industry eyebrows when it did so. Now all the eyebrows are back in their usual place as more and more companies switch to Geann.
They are fully certified to North American standards, the toughest in the world, and should provide many years of trouble-free service.
Valve Cartridge Testing
Valve cartridges in certified faucets are reliably durable and the cartridges used in Huntington Brass faucets are no exception. They are rigorously tested before they are certified for use in North America.
The testing is comprehensive, including tests for the presence of lead in unacceptable amounts and for dozens of other harmful materials and organisms before the faucets are certified safe for use in a drinking water system.
For durability, however, the critical tests are the Life Cycle and Burst tests.
Life Cycle Stress Test
The standard North American life-cycle stress test requires operating the cartridges through 500,000 cycles under 60 pounds per square inch (PSI) of water pressure without a single failure.
Household pressure in North America is between 40 and 60 PSI, so the test is conducted on the high side just to be sure.
At one cycle per second, the test takes 139 hours or most of six days to complete. A valve that does not survive all 139 hours is not considered sufficiently durable and is not certified.
The test simulates approximately 70 years of use in a typical kitchen or bath.[3]
In other countries, the standards are much less rigorous. For example, the European (EN 817) life-cycle test is just 70,000 cycles and the Chinese requirement (GB18145) is a mere 30,000 cycles.
Burst Test
A second stress test, informally known as the "burst test," subjects the cartridges to a water pressure surge of 500 PSI – 10 times typical household water pressure for one minute. If the cartridge leaks or deforms under this pressure, it fails and is not certified.
Aerators
There are dozens of companies in China that manufacture aerators and spray-head assemblies. Most are at least adequate.
Faucet used to be simple devices, generally several layers of aluminum or copper mesh, that merely added a little air to soften the water stream so it would not splash out of the sink.
Today, however, better aerators are precision devices engineered by companies like the Swiss-based Neoperl or Amfag S.r.l., a company manufacturing in Italy, that are also used to limit water volume to the lower flows required by federal and state water conservation laws and to prevent backflow that can result in the contamination of household drinking water.
It is important, therefore, that this little device, often smaller than a dime, be the best available.
Unfortunately, Huntington Brass does not identify the source of the aerators used in its faucets. We took several apart to see if the devices had any manufacturer identification, but they did not.
The company did not respond to our request for aerator information.
Most aerator malfunctions are caused by mineral buildup from hard water, so the fix is the same as that for cartridges. Soak the spray head in a mixture of 50/50 water and household vinegar for up to 30 minutes to dissolve the lime scale. See How to Clean a Faucet Cartridge.
Flow Rates
The maximum faucet flow rate permitted by federal law is 2.2 gallons per minute (gpm).
Huntington Brass faucets are manufactured with a factory-set maximum water flow of 1.5 gpm, which is the European standard and the standard required by the DOE/EPA WaterSense program for lavatory faucets.
For some buyers, this lower flow rate will take some getting used to, especially when using a kitchen sink sprayer.
The company does not seem to offer an option for the higher flow rate in any of its faucets but does provide a lower rate of 1.2 GPM in some of its lavatory faucets to comply with California law.
Faucet Finishes
Afeel does no finishing. All of its faucets are delivered fully finished.
Finish Durability
Some finishes are more durable than others.
Here are common types of faucet finishes and their durability from most to least durable.
- (PVD) finishes are 10 to 20 times more scratch-resistant than electroplated chrome.
-
, electroplating is a process of coating one metal with another using an electrical current to transfer the metal ions through an acid bath. `The process has been used to finish faucets since early in the 19th century.It is a tough finish that will stand up to most abuse, but its durability depends on the metal used.Chrome is durable, nickel less so because it is inherently a softer metal – the reason chrome replaced nickel as the faucet finish of choice in the early 20th century.
- is essentially a paint applied in a powdered form and then heated in an oven to cure. It is considered semi-durable with about the same resistance to scratches and mars as the finish on your car.
Every faucet is available in Chrome, and most faucets in the Decor and Platinum Collections are offered in one of the Satin Nickel finishes.
A Polished Brass PVD finish is offered only in the Decor collection.
The other standard finishes (Satin Brass, Matte Black) available on a particular faucet are identified on the company's website.
Then there are what the company calls its "special finishes" — finishes that may be special-ordered, at an extra charge. These require more lead time because they are finished to order in patinas not stocked in the U.S.
Interestingly enough, although referred to on the company's website, special finishes are never pictured except in the company's wholesale catalogs which are not available to the general public.
You have to visit a showroom to see what "Satin Copper" looks like (or check the chart above for an approximation). However, few showrooms stock specially finished faucets and if they do, they have just a selection of the special finishes.
Other than some of the standard finishes identified as PVD
(physical vapor deposition), Huntington Brass's website does not identify the processes used to produce its finishes.
The only way to find out is to contact customer service and ask. Don't be surprised, however, if nobody knows. This does not appear to be a specification anyone is trained on. We asked in an email that the company identify the processes used to finish its faucets but have not heard back.
The process, however, is very important to the durability of the finish.
Electroplating
Polished Chome and Satin Nickel (but not Satin Nickel PVD) are almost certainly finishes.
The process involves immersing faucet components and the metal to be used as plating in an acid bath, then applying an electrical charge to both objects so metallic ions are drawn from the plating metal to the components.
Usually, multiple coats are applied, one or more undercoats, and then two or more coats of the finish metal.
The top coat may be polished or brushed. Chrome, a relatively hard metal, is usually polished to a high shine. Nickel, a softer metal, is usually brushed to help hide the inevitable minor scratches.
Physical Vapor Deposition
We know that standard finishes, Satin Nickel PVD, Satin Brass PVD, and Polished Brass PVD, are finishes because they are identified by Afeel as such. It is also likely that Polished Nickel and Satin Nickel in the lineup of special finishes are also PVD but we don't know for certain.
PVD is one of the latest space-age faucet finishing technologies, rapidly replacing electroplating as the finish of choice.
Although the technology was discovered in the 19th century, it was not used in industry until the 1950s, and then only rarely due to its great expense. Its first use was to protect components inside nuclear reactors where coatings must be extremely durable.
Today, the technology is everywhere, and the machinery required is getting smaller, faster, and cheaper all the time.
To create a PVD coating, a sealed chamber is loaded with unfinished faucet components. All the air is removed and replaced by a carefully calculated mix of nitrogen or argon and reactive gases.
A rod of the metal to be used for the coating is heated to a temperature so high that the metal dissolves into individual atoms. The atoms mix with the various gases to get the desired color and finish effects and are then deposited in a very thin film – 2 to 5 – on the faucets.
Different finish colors and effects are created by varying the mix of gases in the chamber.
Raw titanium in its natural state is a dull silver color. But when combined with nitrogen gas in a PVD chamber, the metal emerges with a convincing brass finish such as Polished Brass. Adding a little methane to the mix reddens the color, resulting in Satin Copper. A touch of acetylene darkens the finish to produce an antique effect.
Despite being just microns thick, a PVD coating is extremely dense and, in consequence, very hard and durable. By some estimates, it is up to 20 times more scratch-resistant than electroplated chrome.
Finish Care Instructions:
Always read and follow the faucet seller's care instructions.
Careful cleaning and maintenance not only preserve the good looks of your faucet but also your finish warranty.
No faucet company guarantees its finishes against careless cleaning.
Powder Coating
From visual examination and some educated guessing, we believe Matte Black and the majority of the special finishes are . Some evidence effects such as highlights that cannot be easily produced by other finish processes.
A powder coat is essentially a dry paint in powder form applied using a special low-velocity spray gun that disperses the powder while giving it a positive electrical charge. The particles are drawn to the item to be finished which has been given a negative charge.
Once the powder is applied, the item being coated is baked in an oven, which melts and bonds the powder and changes the structure of the coating into long, cross-linked molecular chains.
These chains are what give the coating its durability, reducing the risk of scratches, chipping, abrasions, corrosion, fading, and other wear issues.
The resulting finish is not as durable as electroplated or PVD finishes. Powder coatings are usually described as semi-durable
, somewhat more robust than the finish on your car but still just paint, requiring more care to maintain a like-new appearance.
Huntington Brass seemingly admits the relative fragility of its powder coatings as evidenced by the ten-year warranty that applies to these finishes compared to the lifetime warranty on electroplated and PVD finishes.
Its concern is misplaced, however. Properly applied powder coatings do not fail from manufacturing defects any more often than metal coatings. Any failure is almost always due to improper cleaning and maintenance.
The Website
The Huntington Brass website is well-designed with intuitive navigation. It is responsive, displaying well in all formats from smartphones to desktop monitors.
Our overall impression, however, is that it is a work in progress and still very incomplete — lots of blanks where information should be. Much of the basic information about faucets is missing or incomplete.
Site Search
The site search function is robust so long as search topics are limited to faucet characteristics.
A search on finishes such as "nickel" pulled up every item available in that finish — faucets, tub filler, spouts, shower components, accessories, etc. — useful to select items for a coordinated bath.
Similarly, searching "washerless" produced a set of all faucets with washerless valves.
Non-product searches are generally not productive.
A search on "warranty" returned no result, nor did a search for "special finishes."
Looking for an ADA faucet suitable for persons with a loss of manual dexterity? Huntington Brass has them, but finding them may be a long process. A search on ADA returned nothing.
"WaterSense" also returned no result, nor did "CalGreen" although most lavatory faucets seem to be certified to these water-conserving standards.
A search on "California" to find faucets approved for use in that state resulted in a page full of ceramic valve cartridges, threaded shanks, and shower valve extensions, but no faucets approved by the California Energy Commission.
Filters
Finding a faucet in your price range is somewhat simplified by filters on finish, price, and what is called "category: which lists the series (or sub-collections) within a larger collection. For the Platinum collection, for example, the categories are Davenport, Joy, Taxio, and so on.
There are no filters on design categories (traditional, transitional, or contemporary), handle styles, or number of mounting holes required.
To make the best use of the feature, you will need to know a little faucet terminology: centerset, widespread, pulldown, and so on.
| Specification, Property, or Document | Score | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| ADA Compliance (Yes/No) | 5 | |
| Aerator Source | 0 | Not stated. |
| Certifications | 5 | Very complete |
| Country of Origin | 0 | Not identified. |
| Dimensions | 5 | |
| Dimensioned Drawing | 3 | For some faucets, not all. |
| Drain Included (Yes/No) | 5 | |
| Faucet Images: Dynamic images, Multiple images, and 360° rotating images or video | 3 | Multiple, dynamic images. |
| Finish(es) | 5 | |
| Finish Type | 2 | Stated for a few finishes, not all. |
| Finish Images | 2 | For standard finishes only. |
| Flow Rate(s), Maximum | 5 | |
| Installation Instructions | 2 | For fewer than half of the faucets. |
| Material, Primary (Brass, Stainless, etc.) | 2 | Rarely identified. |
| Materials, Secondary (Zinc, Plastic, etc.) | 0 | Not identified. |
| Mounting Holes, Number of | 5 | |
| Parts Diagram | 3 | For some faucets, not all. |
| Spray Head Material | 0 | (Pulldown or pullout sprays only.) Never identified. |
| Spray Hose Source | 0 | |
| Spray Hose Type | 0 | |
| Supply Connection Size/Type | 0 | Not identified. |
| Supply Hose Included (Yes/No) | 0 | Not stated. |
| Supply Hose Source | 0 | Not identified. |
| Supply Hose Type | 0 | Not identified. |
| Valve/Cartridge Type | 5 | |
| Valve/Cartridge Source | 0 | Not identified. |
| Warranty Online | 5 | |
| Warranty Link in Listings1 | 5 | |
| WaterSense® Listed (Yes/No) | 5 | Lavatory Faucets only. |
|
Scale:
90+ A Excellent, 80+ B Good, 70+ C Average, 60+ D Poor, 59- F Fail
| ||
|
Table Notes:
1, A link from a faucet listing to the full text of the applicable warranty is required by pre-sale availability of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act.
| ||
| Download/Read/Print the minimum content required in an online faucet listing to permit an informed buying decision. | ||
Detailed Specifications
Once a suitable faucet is found, the sufficiency of information about the faucet leaves a great deal to be desired.
The faucet listing itself is sparse, displaying very little of the total information needed about a faucet:
- A three-quarter view image of the faucet,
- A thumbnail that can be selected to display a measured drawing (and for a few faucets, thumbnails to select additional images),
- The list price,
- Available finishes
- Options to add the faucets to the cart, a wish list, or a compare list, and
- A link to find an available showroom near the user's location.
Selecting a finish redisplays the image in the chosen finish, a great aid to visualization.
More information is displayed from links located about halfway down the page. These are "Details", Specifications and Installation", and "Replacement Parts."
- Details lists features what the company deems important and an image of the type of sink on which the faucet may be installed. We have not seen this sink image on other faucet company websites but think it is a very good idea that takes a lot of the guesswork out of faucet selection.
- Replacement Parts displays images of replacement parts available for the faucets. Evidently, most faucets have none because none are displayed.
- For those that do have replacement parts, the only part usually depicted is a valve cartridge. Considering that a typical faucet contains over 30 parts all of which can break and may need replacement, the list seems a little light.
- Specifications and Installation is where the important information resides
- The specifications sheet provides a list of the faucet's features, the standards to which it is certified, and, once again, the finishes available on the faucet. It also may contain an exploded parts diagram and a dimensioned drawing, both helpful in making an informed buying decision.
- However, for about a third of the faucets listed, the link to a specification sheet is missing, and more than half have no link to installation instructions.
Omitted Information
We identify 30 or so faucet specifications that are important to a fully-informed buying decision. Everything from how the faucet is presented in images to the number of mounting holes needed.
The number varies slightly from company to company and from faucet to faucet. Not every faucet listing requires every specification.
For example, WaterSense® listings apply only to lavatory faucets. So, a kitchen faucet listing does not need WaterSense® information. Similarly, the material used in a spray head and spray hose information generally applies only to pulldown or pullout sprays usually found only on kitchen faucets.
Some specifications, however, apply to all faucets. Secondary materials, country of origin, and finish type are examples.
Some information is required by law. A link to the full text of the warranty that applies to a faucet is required by the pre-sale availability rule of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. (16 CFR &§702)
The Hutchinson Brass site provides some basic information but many of the necessary specifications are missing.
"Brass" faucets are rarely solid brass. They also include zinc alloys and plastics, something that should be noted as secondary materials.
We also need more information about the company's finishes.
Most Huntington Brass finishes are warranted for just 10 years, so we would dearly like to know what they are made of and how they are produced. We asked the company by email to identify the processes used to produce its non-PVD finishes, but the company did not respond to the request.
Overall, the information provided on the website is insufficient for an informed buying decision. Almost half of the needed specifications are missing. The website scored 54 out of a possible 100 and was rated F (Fail) for the lack of basic specifications.
Huntington Brass already has all of the necessary information. It just needs to be willing to share.
Where to Buy
Afeel is primarily a distributor but also sells its products directly to consumers at retail through its website. However, it sells at its list price which is usually higher than the prices charged by retail outlets.
In addition to its own website, it makes use of just about every retail pathway available: brick-and-mortar showrooms and supply houses, internet plumbing supply retailers such as PlumbTile, and general retail sites like Amazon, Wayfair, and Overstock.
The company's website provides a list of authorized retailers by ZIP code. Some, such as Briggs Plumbing and Ferguson Enterprises (Wolseley in Canada) are nationwide plumbing supply retailers with a store in nearly every town of any size, so finding a store near you is ordinarily not a problem.
The showroom locator has some odd quirks, however. For example, clicking the showroom locator for the Razo centerset faucet resulted in a display announcing that a "Thermostatic Shower could be found at the following stores." Obviously, the Razo faucet is not a thermostatic shower.
Nor is the locator complete. To find a location near Lincoln, Nebraska, we entered the city name and selected a 100-mile radius. The locator identified Briggs, Inc. in Omaha as a local showroom, but not Briggs, Inc. in Lincoln. We know the Lincoln store carries Huntington Brass faucets because we called to check.
Afeel also distributes faucets to companies that sell them under private labels. The Canadian sanitary wares company, Cheviot Products, for example, sells Afeel faucets under its own
Understanding Finish Warranties
A finish warranty does not protect against everything that can go wrong with a faucet finish.
It covers defects caused by faulty materials or errors in the finishing process, generally subsumed under the rubric "manufacturing defects."
Blistering, delaminating, peeling, and spalling are the usual manufacturing defects. These are very rare – almost unheard of. The bad old days of peeling China chrome are long gone.
Most finish problems these days are caused by overzealous cleaning and ordinary wear and tear, neither of which is covered by a finish warranty.
If it peels, Huntington Brass pays. But, if you scratch it or it turns a funny color after you polish it a few times with Wham-X All Purpose Miracle Cleaner, you are on your own.
The Warranty
Although the company advertises that its faucets are covered by a limited lifetime warranty to be free of leaks and defects in material and workmanship, in fact, only some parts of the faucet are guaranteed for a lifetime.
The Huntington Brass faucet warranty barely meets the requirements needed for a standard North American lifetime warranty.
It is poorly drafted, and full of ambiguities and internal conflicts. Its provisions are jumbled and in no logical order, giving the impression it was added to over time without much thought to integration or inconsistencies among the various parts.
Washerless valve cartridges are guaranteed for ten years and electronic components for two years. Only Chrome and PVD finishes are warranted for a lifetime. All other finishes have a ten-year warranty.
Replacement parts, whether purchased or furnished without charge under warranty are provided "as is" with no warranty whatsoever.
Plastic is excluded from any warranty, not under "Exclusions" but under the heading "Finish Warranty".
An original sales receipt is required for warranty claims, but again only under the heading "Finish Warranty" suggesting that a receipt is not required for claims other than a finish defect – something we suspect is not true in actual practice.
We recommend that you never part with your original receipt. Send a clear photocopy instead.
Conflicting Provisions
There is considerable conflict in the warranty language.
For example, a faucet is guaranteed leak-free for as long as the original buyer "owns their home", but plastic parts are not guaranteed at all.
That exclusion is a problem. All of the company's pulldown and pullout kitchen spray heads are plastic, so are its aerators and the casings that enclose its washerless and ceramic valves. There is a fair chance of a leak in one of these components at some point, which leads to a potential conflict.
If the faucet starts to leak because of a defect in a plastic spray head, which term of the warranty applies? The leak-free provision or the plastic exclusion?
Actually, the solution is simple, at least in the U.S. where the interpretation rules of the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (15 U.S.C. §2301 et seq. follow the old common law doctrine of contra proferentem meaning that any ambiguity in a consumer product warranty must be resolved in favor of the consumer. So the leak would be a covered warranty claim despite being caused by a plastic part.
Definitional Problems
The warranty contains more than a few definitional issues all of which will cause the company problems if the warranty ever ends up in front of a judge. Here are a few examples.
When Does "Lifetime" end?
Consider, for example, the definition of "lifetime."
"Lifetime" is not, as you might assume, for the actual lifetime of any person or thing. It is for "as long as the original purchaser owns their [sic] home."
That's it. As long as the original purchaser owns "their home," the warranty remains in force. The warranty ends only when the buyer ceases to own "their home."
What if the buyer ceases to own the faucet?
Incredibly, continued ownership of the faucet is not required. The only requirement is ownership of "their home."
The omission of a continuing ownership requirement produces some interesting and, almost certainly, unanticipated results.
Consider this situation:
The original owner gives his Huntington Brass faucet to cousin Nell. A few years later, Nell's faucet starts to leak.
Nell has no claim under the warranty. She is not the original purchaser. But, she can ask the original owner to claim on her behalf.
Huntington Brass would be obligated to honor the claim because
- The claim is made by the owner of the warranty, the original purchaser,
- The original purchaser still owns "their home",
- therefore
- The warranty is still in full force.
Who is the "Original Purchaser"?
It is very common for a plumber or remodeling contractor to be the actual purchaser of a faucet on behalf of a customer.
This makes the plumber or contractor the "original purchaser" according to the definition in the warranty.
Only the plumber or contractor could claim under the warranty. The consumer is not the "original purchaser" and has no warranty rights whatgsoever.
What is Meant by "Their Home"?
Nothing in the warranty language suggests that "their home" refers exclusively to the home that the original purchaser owned at the time of purchase.
The term is not defined so it takes its common meaning and encompasses any home owned by the buyer.
Ask yourself if a house the buyer owns is "their home" (ignoring the grammar problem). If so, then the warranty remains in full force. The buyer can own any number of dwellings over many years and as long as the residence is "their home" the warranty continues.
The Problem With "Owns"
There is also a problem with the word "owns."
"Owns" excludes all purchasers who do not own "their home": renters, lessees, and tenants. Admittedly, renters, lessees, and tenants are not frequent faucet buyers but it would be nice not to exclude them from warranty coverage when they do.
A warranty attaches when the faucet is purchased but then immediately expires for lack of the ownership of "their home" required to keep the warranty in force. Probably not what the company intends, but it's the way it chose to word its warranty.
Or, since these buyers do not own their home
, and, therefore, do not qualify for the lifetime warranty, they may be a part of "[a]ll other purchasers" that have a mere 5-year warranty. We'll leave it to the courts to sort this one out.
Better warranty language such as this provision adapted from our Model Limited Lifetime Warranty would eliminate all of these problems.
| Warranty Language | Annotation |
|---|---|
| Afeel Corporation doing business as Huntington Brass ("we, us, our") warrants our faucets to the original consumer owner of the faucet ("you, your") to be free of leaks and defects in materials or workmanship from the date of sale for as long as you own the faucet and live in the residence in which the faucet is first installed. |
|
Legal Lapses
Other problems arise from failing to comply with the requirements of Magnuson-Moss. This federal law dictates the content and form of consumer product warranties, and it is to be ignored only by the very venturesome at considerable risk.
Tie-In Provision
As an example, consider the provision that excludes faucets
"… repaired with parts other than original service parts …"
from warranty coverage. Not only is the provision much too broad[4] but it is also an obliquely worded "tie-in" provision.
Magnuson-Moss prohibits provisions that require a consumer to only use the company's parts on penalty of losing some or all warranty protection. Consequently, this provision is unenforceable. (16 CFR § 700.10)
Improper Captioning
More issues arise from the fact that the warranty is improperly captioned.
The Magnuson-Moss Act favors an unlimited or full warranty. It grudgingly allows a limited warranty if and only if the issuer touches all of the required bases. One of the most important of these is a properly-worded caption.
To be a limited warranty, the document must clearly identify (or designate
) itself as a limited warranty with the magic word "limited" in its caption or title. (16 CFR §7000.6(a))
The caption language can take on many acceptable forms: "Limited Warranty,", "Limited Lifetime Warranty," "Huntington Brass Limited Lifetime Faucet Warranty," and so on.
So long as the word "limited" is included, the caption gives "fair warning" to a potential buyer, right at the very top of the document, that the coverage provided by the warranty is less than full coverage.
Unfortunately, none of the instances of the Huntington Brass warranty that we have found — the website version, the catalog version, or the version in the box with the faucets — is properly captioned. One was captioned "Warranty Informaton." The others had no caption at all.
Although it is clear from the text of the warranty that Huntington Brass intends to offer a limited warranty, the improper caption automatically converts the warranty to a Full Warranty, disregarding Huntington Brass's intentions. (15 U.S.C. §2303(a), 16 CFR §700.6(a))
This one simple drafting omission changes the entire nature of the Huntington Brass warranty.
A full warranty gives a buyer many more rights, voiding almost all of the restrictions and limitations written into the Huntington Brass warranty.
Here are some examples:
-
Labor Costs: The warranty seeks to evade responsibility for
[l]abor charges … occurring during the removal, transportation, return or installation of products or replacement products."
- Under a full warranty, this exclusion is not allowed.
- A faucet is in the class of products that "has utility only when installed," meaning that the company is responsible for the labor costs associated with uninstalling and reinstalling the faucet as well as the cost of its repair. (16 CFR § 700.9)
- Limitation of Remedies: Nor may the company limit the remedies available under the warranty to merely providing replacement parts. What happens if replacement parts do not restore the faucet to full functionality?
- A full warranty does not allow the company to limit what it will do to fix a defective faucet. It deems the manufacturer to have committed to doing whatever it takes without any charge to the buyer.
- If Huntington Brass cannot repair the faucet after several attempts within a reasonable time frame, the customer has the choice of receiving a complete refund or a replacement faucet. (15 U.S.C. §2304(a)(4))
A consumer product warranty is a legal document creating enforceable legal obligations. Its writing is not something to be entrusted to amateurs, even amateurs with an MBA. Warranties should be written by a lawyer and not just any lawyer but one intimately familiar with warranty law. Less-than-competent warranty writing has real consequences, and these are just a few.
In any court challenge, not only with Afeel lose but it will also end up paying the consumer's legal fees — a little present from Magnuson-Moss for failing to pay attention to its requirements. (15 USC §2310(d)(2))
Pre-2006 Warranty
In practice, Afeel does not honor its lifetime warranty on faucets sold before the current owners took control in 2005, denials that have resulted in many unhappy customers and a lot of internet gripe-site complaints.
Complaining about a warranty denial on an internet gripe site may make you feel better, but does not aid your warranty claim. To find out how to enforce your faucet warranty, see The Warranty Game: Enforcing Your Product Warranty.
The explanation offered is that the company changed hands in 2005 and is no longer the same company.
However, the California Secretary of State belies this explanation. Filing records show that the company is the same company under new ownership, not a different company, and as the same company, it is legally obligated to honor any warranties given before 2005 that have not expired.
The more likely explanation is probably no more complicated than the fact that the company changed suppliers and no longer has access to replacement parts needed to fix pre-2006 faucets.
Since Afeel cannot provide the replacement parts promised under the warranty, the buyer's remedy is either a replacement faucet or a full refund, at the buyer's option. (15 USC §2304(a)(4))
To read the Huntington Brass warranty in effect from 2003 through 2005, download Huntington Warranty: 2003 - 2005.
Prior to 2003, the company evidently offered a 10-year warranty that has now expired.
Customer Service
We rated customer service adequate but not exceptional.
In reports from our volunteers who contacted customer service for information or solutions to imaginary problems, the demeanor of agents was most often described as "bored and disinterested." As agents are the voice and face of the company, "bored and disinterested" is probably not the image the company wants to convey.
Representatives are familiar with products and able to answer fairly simple questions but often had to get information from someone else in the company if the inquiry was the least bit complicated. If the inquiry was very complicated, agents promised to get answers and call us back, but never did.
The majority of warranty claims seem to be handled with dispatch, but again, if the process gets too involved, agents seem to let the pitch go by, resulting in a number of complaints from customers about failure to respond to their issues.
The Better Business Bureau rates the company's handling of consumer concerns a C+ (average) on a scale of A+ to F also based on the company's failure to respond.
Testing & Certification
Huntington Brass faucets are now fully certified, but this has not always been true.
In 2010 the company avoided a proposed penalty of $251,850.00 for non-compliance with the registration requirements (10 CFR §430.62) of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act by entering into a compromise agreement with the Department of Energy and paying $10,000 (Afeel: Order 2010-CW-07/1414).
Having learned its lesson, it now has all of its faucets and showerheads listed in the DOE Compliance Certification Database and is otherwise fully certified to North American standards.[5]
CalGreen® Certified: Some, but not necessarily all, Huntington Brass faucets comply with the energy-saving requirements of the California Green Buliding Standards Code. For a faucet to display the CalGreen label, it must have been tested for compliance with CALGreen Chapter 4, Residential Mandatory Measures, Section 4.303 Indoor Water Use and certified by an independent testing organization.
Comparable Faucets
The company's history, business model, sources of supply, and products are almost identical to those of two other importers of faucets from Taiwan and China that started business in the last decades of the 20th century. Other imported faucets more or less comparable to Huntington Brass include,
Conclusions
Huntington Brass faucets are generally reliable products sold by a reputable company with a substantial history — a company that is likely to be around for a while.
These are not necessarily bargain faucets but are comparably priced with fully certified Asian faucets of the same quality sold by other faucet companies in North America.
Be a little wary of the Afeel faucet warranty. The company has shown a willingness to stonewall seemingly valid warranty claims in the past, and there is no reason to believe it has mended its ways.
Most faucet companies cooperate with us in preparing our reports, if only to ensure that we have our facts straight. Generally, a dialog with the company results in a more complete and accurate report and gives the company an opportunity to disclose future plalns and tell us about what is being done to correct problems and improve products or services.
Afeel declined our requests for basic information made over several weeks by simply filing to respond to emails or return telephone calls.
In consequence, most of the information in this report has been researched through public sources or obtained from third parties. Some is based on information obtained from the company in past years.
We beleive the is accurate, but it has not been vetted by the company.
We are continuing to research Afeel. If you have experience with Huntington Brass faucets, good, bad, or indifferent, we would like to hear about it, so please starcraftreviews@yahoo.com or post a comment below.
- If an assembly turns a collection of parts and components into what is recognizably a faucet where before the assembly there was no recognizable faucet, then the assembly is considered transformative. Mere attachment of additional components to an already recognizable faucet is not "transformation". The faucet was already a faucet before the components were attached.
-
The newer faucet construction method, and almost certainly the wave of the future, is called "core and shell". The water channel is provided by the core components, typically consisting of copper or composite tubes that are guaranteed to be lead-free. This core is then concealed inside the decorative outer shell that provides the faucet's shape and style. Because it never touches water, the shell can be made of leaded brass, and because it is not subject to water pressure, it does not need to be structural and can be made of much thinner material.
The technology is actually not all that new. Wall-mounted faucets have always been core and shell. The core (usually called the "valve" or the "rough") is mounted in the wall and the shell (called the "trim") conceals the core. What's new is that the technique is now being applied to faucets other than wall mounts, and the core, rather than being brass is some other lead-free metal, usually copper or a zinc alloy, and some companies are experimenting with composite cores, eliminating metal entirely.
faucets are already all core and shell construction with a zinc alloy shell.
- If the test simulates 70 years of use, how is it that faucet cartridges often fail much sooner?
- The answer is minerals.
- Testing is done with distilled water. Your household water is anything but distilled. It contains minerals that accumulate on your faucet cartridge over time eventually causing it to leak. Periodically cleaning your ceramic cartridges, however, will add years to the service life of the cartridge.
- Learn how at How to Clean a Ceramic Valve Cartridge.
- Overreaching is a serious problem in consumer warranties, and this is a prime example. If a set screw is replaced with one from the hardware store, the Huntington Brass warranty ends. Why? What has a set screw to do with a possible future leak? What the warranty should say, and what Afeel probably intends, is the warranty will not apply to defects caused by the use of non-original service parts. So, if a hardware store set screw rusts, that's the owner's problem, not the company's.
- Huntington Brass faucets are listed in the following current IAPMO-RT certificates: