Any Advice on Installing a Faucet on a Bathroom Sink?

[hunter]

24. We live in a place with aggressive water.

The trouble with most new "all metal" faucets I've seen is that only part of the faucet is made out of a good copper alloy. The rest of the faucet will be made out of some horrid die-cast metal with cheap plating that our water will destroy or make ugly in 5-10 years. I've had better luck with faucets from reputable manufacturers that have largely plastic internals and plastic or stainless steel exteriors.

We live in one of the first California cities to have an exemption to use cpvc pipe instead of copper because the water from some wells is so aggressive it can eat copper pipe. What it does to galvanized pipe and die-cast metal is even worse.

But CPVC has issues with chemical hazards, especially with the solvents used to weld pipe and fittings together.

Of course these days the preferred water pipe in many places is PEX tubing, which is wonderful stuff, easy to work with if you have the right tools; just keep it away from the sun or other UV light sources.

I'm not sure what to think about the direct-to-fixture Pex installations I've seen, where you can control the water to individual fixtures or a group of fixtures from a single row of valves in the garage or utility room. It's rather similar to the way you can flip individual circuit breakers on and off from a central electric panel. In construction like this here are no shut off valves under the sinks or behind the toilet. Our oldest kid rents a house like that. The blue and red PEX tubing emerges directly from the wall and goes straight to the sink fixtures or toilets.