Drop ear questions for new hand shower

[Anthony Curtas]

Hi all,
I have a couple of questions regarding a hand shower rough in.

It screws onto a stub out (1/2 MIP). How much thread do you normally leave exposed past the finished wall for this?

How do you normally rough this in? I was planning on a shower drop ear with a brass nipple in the wall sticking out the right amount. Is that good enough or is it too difficult to get the depth correct this way? I was planning on screwing the drop ear to some blocking (and I don't really have access from behind the wall to adjust). Only other way I could think of is copper to an adapter fitting sweated on, but the screwed in drop ear seems more solid.

Finally, the best place for this is below the valve. I usually see the hose for hand showers up high, but I don't see any reason why it couldn't be low. Seems like it would reach more places in the shower. Any worries there?

Thanks all,
Anthony

 

[CountryBumkin]

I installed my handheld the same way you are describing (using threaded pipe nipple). The trick is figuring out where to mount the drop-ear so that a standard off-the-shelf size pipe nipple will work. So you have to figure out how thick is the wall material (Durock, etc.) and how thick is the tile and grout going to be then set drop-ear in the right spot.

Of course the trick is to screw the handheld shower hose adapter onto the nipple and have it end up tight against the tile with the hose connection in the correct place (i.e. pointing down). I didn't get it exactly right the first time, so the 2" was too short and the 2-1/2" nipple was too long, then I bought a custom sized 2-1/4" nipple. But the 2-1/4 bottomed against the tile with the hose connection at 12 o'clock. So I switched back to the 2-1/2 and it worked fine the second time.
I found out just installing the nipple (tight) and removing it, and installing it again will shorten the protruding nipple threads by 1/8".
BTW my fitting was NPT (tapered pipe) not MIP. CORRECTION: NPT is the same as MIP. Thanks for pointing that out to me, Reach.

Lastly I installed the handheld low too. So that it can be reached/used from the shower seat and so the hose is long enough to reach the far corner of shower and to wash the dog.

 

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[Plumber69]

U can hacksaw 1 or 2 threads off both sides of the nipple to get any length you want. I do this all the time. It still seals and is never under a constant pressure