Medline Grab Bar

Greetings.

I purchased 3 of these Medline Knurled Chrome grab bars(2-24" and 1-32") for my father. I needed the "knurled" feature as these are for the shower stall, and thus needed the texturized grip.

The knurled part of the bar has excelent grip in both wet and dry conditions, and each bar comes with 6-2" wood screws and 2 white rubber installation-end-gaskets to cushion the bar against the wall for installation. They do not come with the plastic anchors for the screws that you need for installation into a concrete wall, those will have to be purchased seperately.

That being said, it's a bar that doesn't stick out too far from the wall, just about 3" (this is important if you have a small-to-medium sized stall, as the bars will reduce the space to move within the stall by anywhere from 3-5" in most cases, PER each side of the stall having a bar). Continuing,.....it's a bar, it works, it looks 1/2 way decent, it does its job quite well and it was/is relatively cheap via Amazon with the Free Super Saver Shipping feature.

The only complaints I have with the bars, are not so much with the actual bars themselves, but rather with two facts.

Fact one: Each bar comes in its own retail box, true, but, during the mailing of the product, Medline packaged each retail box seperately in a HUGE carton shipping box, with lots and lots of padding, so I received 3 incredibly huge-for-the-content and overly stuffed (paper stuffing too) carton boxes. This may seem like a pet-pieve but this just seems senseless for a company to do, especially when the object is to save money when you're shipping for FREE (they tripled their shipping costs and tripled their consumption of paper based shipping materials), and especially when all of the bars were ordered form the same vendor in the same order at the same time, and when part of the FSSS feature is to have the items come in as few shipments as possible. It just seems ecologically unfriendly for the times.

Fact two: The Medline bars, both the 24" and the 32" are advertised as 1.5" knurled diameter bars, but what I received was 3 bars of 1.25" (0.25" smaller) knurled diameter bars (stated on the retail box). I could see maybe one of three bars or maybe the 2 bars of 24" being the lesser-than-advertised diameter, as maybe they were out of stock, but all three? Somebody made a typo on the Amazon description page. I now live outside the continental 48 and it'd be too expensive to send these back up, so I'll just have to live with someone else's mistake. (Thankfully my father has smaller hands than me, so maybe this was supposed to be, but still......advertise it correctly or get the order right, otherwise don't send it out I say).

Thus based on those two facts, the bars get 4 stars, and not 5, for their rating. Then again, shipping was FREE, so what am I complaining about?...lol... you get the picture.

Ok, that's it, hope this helps you. Cheers!

Medline makes very solid knurled "grab bars" for the bathtub or shower; and these truly come in handy--even if you're not disabled. The knurled finish simply means that there are small ridges on the actual bar to help you hold onto the bar even when your hands are wet; and it's a big plus to have this bar to hold onto when you're getting in or out of the bathtub or the shower. The rubber pads do indeed come with this bar and so far the screws that came with this product have definitely been rust resistant. Great!

Another reviewer writes that they were annoyed by the way these bars are packed for shipping. Unfortunately, however, it's really the best way to send these through the mail. The sturdy and thick packaging prevents damage to the bars while post office employees throw your package all over the place. Moreover, the extra packaging prevents again damage to the bars as the box containing them gets bumped around on a postal tractor trailer truck or in the crate bin of an airplane.

On the plus side again, these bars hold my weight which, although it's more than I'd like it to be, is thankfully less than 250 pounds so I feel quite safe using them for support in the tub. It's good to be able to take a shower in the bathtub and hold onto this bar while I turn around in the shower so that I don't slip and fall. I suppose if you use these bars in the bathtub strictly for helping you to take a bath safely then you may want to attach the bar a bit lower so that you can reach it. If you have a rather small shower stall is very the bar could limit your space; but you'd really have to have a small shower stall since these safety bars don't stick out much more than 3 inches.

I honestly can't think of a single negative thing to say about these safety bars. My handyman was able to do the installation very quickly and that's another plus. I highly recommend these grab bars for the bath or shower by Medline.

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We had several Medline knurled chrome grab bars installed in our shower for safety since I am a polio survivor who needs to be careful about falls. Our handyman had an easy time installing them (both vertically and horizontally on all sides of the shower) and they've been a great boon. The knurling makes them safe to grip even when your hands are soapy and they anchored very securely to the wall behind the shower tiles with the included screws after holes were drilled into the tiles.

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As far as it goes, the grab bar is a good product. It's solid and appears well made -but the design is very deficient. Most homes built in certainly the last fifty years have 16" on-center studs -it's a building code requirement. So, a grab bar that will work in a normal home -even if it's called a 32" grab bar -needs to be somewhat like the dimensional lumber we now have: it's called a 2X4 but it's really a 1.75X3.5 piece of wood. Similarly, the 32" grab bar needs to be shorter than a full 32 inches in order that the outside (centered) screw holes actually grab some of the stud wood that they are supposed to be anchored to. I have seen some outrageously expensive designs which have variable screw holes (some as many as nine) so you can position your anchoring screws into the stud and not outside it. But that's an expensive and unnecessary luxury. It would be just as easy to make the 32" grab bar a 31" bar and move the upper and lower screw holes about 1/2" from their existing locations and you would have an exceptional product that would anchor into 16" on-center studs.

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I have lately got to the age where I am a bit unsteady and need safety bars in my bathroom. After breaking my foot slipping while getting out of the tub, and having to wear a cast for a month, it was time so I finally bought this product, the 32" bar in white, and also two smaller bars, two of the 12" bars. Easy to install with my cordless screwdriver. Plenty of screws come with the product and also gaskets to keep water from getting under the edge of the bar. The bars look great (white, in my green and white bathroom) and I feel more secure holding onto my bars which are mounted so securely that I can put my full weight onto them. My conclusion is that these safety bars are a wise investment and they look fine as well. Recommended for all. Get them before you fall and break something like I did. I'm lucky only breaking my foot.