American Standard Town Square S Valve Only Trim Kit With Double Ceramic Pressure Balance Cartridge With Lever Handle - AMS-TU455500

Trim only. TU455500 is a valve-only trim kit, meaning you get the escutcheon, lever handle and the double ceramic pressure balance cartridge, and you still need the in-wall rough-in valve body ordered separately. If the wall is already roughed in with an American Standard pressure balance valve, this is the finish package that goes over it.

That is what the pressure balance cartridge is for. The ceramic balancing spool reacts to changes in relative hot and cold supply pressure and holds output temperature steady, so a flush or a washing machine draw on the cold side does not spike the shower. For a multi-family building on shared risers, that is the main reason to spec a pressure balance trim over a plain two-handle setup.

Yes. The cartridge has an adjustable hot limit safety stop that caps how much hot water can mix with the cold, set at the handle during trim-out. That is the field adjustment property managers and facility crews use to dial back scald risk without touching the water heater. It is adjustable per fixture, so you can set it once and repeat it across a floor of identical openings.

No. The Town Square S cartridge has back-to-back capability, so hot and cold can be reversed quickly at the cartridge. That covers the common back-to-back bathroom layout where one of the two valves ends up mirrored, and it saves opening the wall on a remodel where the rough is already set.

The trim is listed for shower and tub use, but valve-only means there is no diverter built into it. It controls volume and temperature at one outlet. If you need to switch between a tub spout and a showerhead from the handle, you want a tub-and-shower trim with a diverter or a separate diverter valve, not this kit.

Five: chrome (TU455500.002), polished nickel (TU455500.013), matte black (TU455500.243), brushed nickel (TU455500.295), and Brushed Cool Sunrise (TU455500.GN0). The suffix after the dot is the finish code, so if you are matching other Town Square S pieces already in the bathroom, order to the same suffix across the spout, showerhead and accessories.

One-piece. The ceramic disc mixing valve and the ceramic balancing spool are combined into a single cartridge, so a service call is one part out and one part in rather than rebuilding two assemblies. The ceramic material is not affected by mineral deposits or hard water, which is the usual reason a mixing valve starts dripping or gets stiff to turn on a building with aggressive water.

Not for the trim itself. Check valves are integrated into the cartridge to eliminate cross flow between the hot and cold sides, so there is no add-on kit to specify. Anything your local code requires upstream at the supplies is a separate matter and sits outside this kit.

It widens the usable range of handle travel inside the comfortable temperature band. In practice the handle gives you more rotation to fine tune temperature instead of the whole useful range being squeezed into a small arc, which is what people complain about when a shower is either lukewarm or scalding with nothing in between.

Lever. TU455500 ships with a single lever handle across all five finishes; there is no cross-handle option under this number. For accessible units the lever is generally the one specified, since it operates without gripping or twisting.