It all started because we have been putting off replacing the guts in our half bath. It escalated quickly into replacing shower/tub cartridges in two other bathrooms. In hind sight I would say replacing the toilet guts would have been much quicker and much easier especially since we have the replacement parts sitting in the cabinet in that bathroom. Let our problem become your life lesson.
Bill and I have our waterloo’s. In his case it actually is the loo or rather anything plumbing related, he hates it. Loves outside irrigation stuff, like loves, loves it so weird right?
I have nightmares about electrical.
I can do plumbing it doesn’t wig me out. Bill can do electrical it doesn’t bother him a bit. Together we are team.
Over the years Bill has become much more comfortable with plumbing he will never love it but he can look it in the eyes and let it know he is coming for it. Today when I went in his office and said, “There are no shut off valves for that shower in the hall bath. There is a shut off valve for the toilet and I haven’t checked the sinks but none for the shower. IF I go up in the crawl space and find a main shut off valve, do you think it would turn the water off for the whole bath area or just the shower? ” His reply, “I don’t know.”
Now I have been avoiding going up in the crawl space because I had started cleaning it out a year or so ago. I remembered getting it all pretty tidy! We had a plumber coming for the water softener and I took things that were lying in the basement and quickly shoved them up in the crawl space because I don’t want the plumber to think less of us. What I remembered was a HUGE whale size cardboard box that blocked the entire crawl space doorway. I did not want to deal with it, so I forgot we had a crawl space. Until the other day when a son asked me a question about a thing and I went up, because I love him that much. It’s a mess. I looked for what he had asked me about, made several attempt to move a few things, gave up and got out. Shut the door and went back to forgetting we have a crawl space.
Because I did not want to use the “four flush toilet” in the half bath today I decided to use the hallway bath. Now I have been avoiding this bathroom even though I did redo it and I l love the way it looks, but the shower leaks. It’s a small room. You can’t avoid the drip. It’s like some ancient torture so I avoid it.
When I was redoing that area I did take the HUGE access panel off to see if I could just turn the water off to stop the drip till we changed the cartridges. I found no shut off valves. The panel has stayed off because I was sure I would get back to that, I didn’t. Today when I asked Bill about the shut off in the crawl space and he found out that the panel was already off he went and looked. He didn’t see anything either, which made me feel better. He went up in the crawl space to look for a shut off, which also made me feel better. He came back and reported there is no shut off for that bathroom. To turn the water off you have to turn it off from the source. I realized that not only would we have to agree to pretend we have no crawl space but now we would need to wall off the hallway bathroom and never talk about it again. Our houses square footage is shrinking by the home repair.
Before things got to that point Bill went back in to do battle with his arch nemesis, plumbing. He took the cover off on the shower side and that’s where he found a way to turn off the water. Two screws, no handles, just flat head screws and only one of them would turn. The other was welded into place by years of lime/calcium/rust and water gunk. Did he panic? He did not. His wife, me, had worked for Delta Faucet and while I am not shower faucet certified (our youngest son is), I am bathroom/kitchen sink/faucet, tub/shower and toilet certified. Which means that I spent a lot of time on the phones talking people down off the plumbing edge. Stuck cartridges/handles happen all the time. Repeatedly we told people, “See if you can get some white vinegar in there or soak a paper towel and wrap it around and get it into the stuck parts/area. You will need to let it sit and it could take time, you might need to keep repeating this but it will work.” Repeatedly people did not like this advice nor did they believe it. Plumbers came in and said can’t be done, you have to cut it all out and replace it. That is quicker than letting something soak for days.
Most people who took the advice were able to get things unstuck. It feels like a dodge asking people if they have a syringe or way to get vinegar into what feels like impossible places. Telling them to soak paper towels and wrap the part and leave it, people think your blowing them off to get them off the phone. But here’s the thing, I take my own advice and if I don’t believe it I won’t say it.
When we fixed the downstairs shower, which was also leaking, the cartridge was stuck. I soaked a paper towel, wrapped it, kept it wet and waited. We bought a cartridge and waited. That gave the vinegar enough time to do it’s work.
What did Bill do today when he could not get the water turned off on the one side because the screw would not turn? He soaked a paper towel, wrapped it, and we are waiting. Till the water can be shut off we can’t try to remove the cartridge because it is the only thing holding back the flood gates. More than likely that will also need to be soaked with vinegar to get it out but until I can get the water off I’m not willing to work on that.
This is what the front, inside the shower, looks like with the round plate off. You can see the turn off valve, the flat head screw on the right, that is the one that would turn off. The one on the left is under the paper towel soaked in vinegar.
The access panel is on the wall outside of the shower/toilet closet.
We expected the shut off valves to be actual valves with handles and we expected the handles to be on THIS side of the plumbing so that you could take off the access panel door and reach them. We did NOT expect the shut off valves to be flat head screws that you could only access from inside the shower. I guess that if you were turning off the water you were probably doing so to change out something inside the tub/shower area. The man who built this house owned/owns the plumbing store in town. If anyone should know plumbing and best practices one would think it should have been him so there must be some reason for having done it like this.
Note: The vinegar soaked paper towels stayed on for several hours and they did the trick. Bill took them off and that screw turned and he was able to turn the water off in the shower. To all of those nay sayers I talked to when I worked at Delta, HA HA I TOLD YOU SO! I mean that in the most childish way possible you do do poo poo heads.
Since we were in plumbing mode I decided it was time to tackle the shower in the master bathroom. It is a stand alone shower with a large spa sprayer thing plus the normal shower head. There is a handle which turns water on for the normal shower head and there are hot and cold handles which turn on a tub fill spout. We have had the spa sprayer thing power turned off for a long time now. We don’t really use it because it sounds fun and cool but I don’t know. It got unplugged when we were bathing the dogs in there and water was being directed at the control panel for that unit which is on the wall. When the dogs were done and the water was off the spa just started turning on and off. We unplugged it and have never taken that access panel back off to plug it in again. This also means that the hot/cold tub fill handles don’t get used either. The other day when I went to turn them on, for funzies, only one would turn. It hasn’t been a big deal because we don’t use them but like I said today is plumbing day.
This is where I ran into a new problem, I could not find the set screw. Handles will often have a small screw in the handle which you turn to tighten the handle and you remove to take the handle off. If there are no screws sometimes the handle just pulls off. These handles did not appear to have set screws and they would not pull off. Bill came in to check my work and as he was fiddling with the handle he felt the tip give. ( I like to think I loosened it.) Turns out the tips on the right and left unscrew.
Inside each end is a set screw and a washer. Using an allen wrench I simply unscrewed them both, being careful not to let them fall down the drain. Pro tip, put a towel over the drains when you are working on things like this. If something falls it will fall on the towel not down the drain. Yes, you can close the drain but covering it gives just one more fail safe and it can make seeing things and picking them up easier. Once the screws were out the handle pulls off.
One more screw to go and luckily the same size allen wrench worked on that one too. What I neglected to take a picture of is what it looked like between the pic on the left and the pic on the right. When I say “handle” what I’m talking about is the metal tube piece you see on the left. Behind that you can see another metal cover which has been removed from the pic on the right. This is where that next set screw is hidden. You have to remove that and then that whole larger metal cap pulls off and you can now access the cartridge that you see here on the right.
You look at this and you think, well that doesn’t look to bad. Definitely not as bad as that other bathroom. I think your wrong, that cartridge is okay.
Trust me on this when I say, respectfully, your wrong just replace it. This is an argument I have had way to many times and I’m always right. A new faucet or new cartridge could experience the same problem if you don’t flush the line before installing. First reaction is the problem is the faucet or you got a bad cartridge. Nope, I’m telling you it was the water or the water line. Sediment, minerals in the water, rust, something that got into your water lines and has been waiting for just this minute to ruin your day just plugged up your cartridge. You can try blowing it out, you can try flushing it out but the odds are great you need a new one. Even if you have an amazing water filter, purifier, softener you can still have gunk in your lines that will clog up your seats/springs and cartridges. The problem might not even originate in your home it could be city water, they flush their lines and something breaks free on their end and it gets into your pipes.
What can you do? You flush out that water line before you put the cartridge in. Your going to say but I’ll get wet! Water will shoot everywhere! Your correct, put a towel over it. Let that water run you want to make sure that anything lurking in there has time to flush out. Then turn that water back off and put your new cartridge in. Now test it all BEFORE you put the whole faucet or handle back together. While you now possess the skillz to take it apart why go through all that if you don’t have to?
Another problem that will make you think you got a bad cartridge or you have a worse plumbing problem is the cartridge did not go in correctly. If it goes in even just a hair crooked the water will either not turn on or it will be a trickle or it will leak and you can’t stop it. If it doesn’t go in all the way you won’t be able to get it all together again or if it does go together you might not have water or the pressure you wanted. You may have even used the removal/inserting tool and it still didn’t get seated in there correctly. If it goes in crooked the rubber seal could get damaged and then it won’t seal which will cause it to leak. If you have seats and springs you can put things in upside down or not in the correct order and it will leak.
How do I know this? Not just because I talked to hundreds of people who had issues like this but because it has happened to us too. Remember that downstairs bathroom? Well we got our tool, we got our new cartridge, we got that old one unstuck using vinegar we were ready. BAM baby new cartridge is in and oh it felt good, it took a little bit of wiggling and slightly more push than expected but it went in. We put that handle back together and turned the water on and oh you know how good it felt? Yea it DIDN’T feel good because there was no joy! It leaked like we had an open pipe in the wall. We turned the water back off and retreated to the internet to order another cartridge. It had gone in just a hair crooked so slightly that you think well that should be okay but it isn’t. The rubber seal had been damaged even thought it looked ok it wasn’t. Armed with this new knowledge about how it “feels” when it is going in crooked, the new one went in smooth because we understood how the install got messed up the first time. Turned the water on BEFORE putting it all back together, the water now worked great and it turned off perfectly.
The unfortunate thing is we fixed the shower, it no longer leaked and we had great water pressure. We also did something to the shut off valve in the ceiling in the bedroom closet. That leaked all night, Luckily I went down there the next morning and walked through the bedroom closet to get to the bathroom and discovered the lake. Which is why there is new flooring in both rooms, new ceiling, new wall stuff, etc… It was a mess but the shower was perfect.
Here you can see the hot and cold knob tips (left and right), the piece that those tips screw into that sits on the cartridge head to turn the water on and off, the set screws and washers from inside them as well as the set screw from inside the larger metal cap, the metal cab and the allen wrench. Make sure you keep all these pieces safe and together so that you can put it all back together once you get your new part.
The job won’t be finished till we can get things loosened up enough to be able to remove the cartridge. We won’t know which cartridge to order till we can get the old ones out. IF you know what model faucet you have sometimes you can get your replacement part info from a box, manual, or the internet. Ours are 30 plus years old and we don’t have info on them. We tracked down our downstairs shower based on what brand it was and then the number on the actual cartridge. It’s a Moen shower so I went to their website and used their service tab to help identify it. Armed with the parts diagram we could confirm that this shower set used that cartridge and we could order a manufacturer part. You might ask, “Why didn’t you call Moen support?” Good question. The answer is we are not the original owners. The person who built this house and put the plumbing in sold the house to someone else and a year after that we bought the house from them. Sometimes companies will give you a one time gift but not always and the part was under $20.
Delta Faucet parts site. They also have a “identify your faucet” tool which can be helpful because you can’t always find those model numbers. Although Delta faucets normally have theirs on a line tag but if it got removed….
Northern Plumbing parts site. This site isn’t vendor specific and it will often have older products, parts sheets, installation manuals etc…
Peerless parts site. Delta and Peerless use the same support.
Kohler parts site.
Moen, you need to click the “Service” tab and then select what help you need.
Ferguson website. Sometimes you can identify your product by finding it on a sales website. If you know it came from Menards, Lowes, Home Depot, Ace, Do it Best you might be able to find it on their websites. Manufacturers do make “special” products just for these retailers so you might not find them on the actual vendors site or on a big plumbing site like Ferguson. Once you identify the model you can then find the parts list which will tell you exactly what parts you might need to order.
Couple of notes, if you know what brand it is you can call their support number. At Delta we would help people figure out what faucet they had. If it wasn’t ours sometimes we were even able to tell them whose it was so they could call that company. Many times we needed pictures to identify the product. If a rep asks you to take a photo don’t assume they are just trying to get you off the phone. Take photos and send them. If you don’t hear back call back in. The reps want to help you and when I worked there we sent cartridges for free, as a matter of fact we sent out a lot of different parts to help people get their products working again. We actually wanted you to succeed. There were times we could not send the part for free and we actually felt bad about that. Call!
Most problems generally came down to seats & springs or cartridges at least in the faucet world. Toilets, bidets’ and tub/showers whole different animals. Be careful buying off brand parts. They might be cheaper (unless your calling the company and they are sending you what you need for free) but they also might not last and they might not work. Get the manufacturer product it’s worth it.
If you are not comfortable doing the work yourself that’s okay but know how things should work and how repairs should be done. That knowledge will help you to know who to trust in doing your repair. If we really cannot get these things unstuck and the valve needs to be replaced we will be calling the plumber. Because that will involve cutting the pipe and doing some work that yea we just feel like a professional would be better doing. I don’t feel bad about that. I know my limits and that’s smart.
Once we have the thing loose, out, new parts ordered I’ll do another post on how that all worked out. Till then stay clean.
Side note, if you have your plumber or handyman call to get your parts, we want to talk to you and will only ship to your address. What manufacturers don’t want is for you to be charged for a part that we send for free. Sometimes service people like to keep parts in their trucks so they can do repairs, charge the customer, get paid, then call the vendor and get a replacement part for free using a customers info. That’s why a support person will want to talk to you and ship to you not your repair guy. We also saw where a repair person would get the part shipped to them and then never show up to do the repair. When the customer called back in to get another part we couldn’t ship it because our records said we had sent it. The company policy really is to be advocates for our customers.
As for that 4 flush toilet and replacing the guts, will that happen today because it’s plumbing day? yea mind your own beeswax
