Craig Hatfield
09-10-04, 02:01 PM
Greetings,
We have a 3 knob shower/tub fixture setup, and the hot water was leaking when we bought the house. The knob was being turned tighter and tighter to lessen the leaking and eventually there was a fairly constant stream. (which was running back through the wall and soaking the framing in-between that bathroom and the closet behind it! But that's another story, and it's all dry now.)
I removed the plastic/decorative "H" cover to get at the screw behind the knob and the screw head sheared and fell off at the sight of the phillips head! Both the hot and cold had to be drilled out to get the knobs off, and only then could the difficult job of getting the stems out begin. There was quite a bit of deposit built up on all three, and the hot water side was obviously the most difficult to get off.
So, we have all three removed and my question is what to do now? I've read through these forums today, so I'm much more familiar than I was about what I'm doing at all. I'm assuming I removed the 'stems' and that the 'seats' should theoretically be in there still, if I use a flashlight to see them. The hot water side should be damaged, which was causing that leaking in the first place. (?) Now the stems are broken because I had to drill to get them off. (?) The footprint of the current setup is 11 inches, whereas most new sets you buy at Home Depot and the like are 8 or 9 inches, so we've decided to try and just replace and use what we have.
Have I entered the world of custom plumbing? I assume I need to buy new seats, stems and knobs/fixtures to go on the outsides of them. Is this something that is easy to come by? Most people at stores in our area only know how to sell you a box including what is behind the wall, which in our case is older, but very heavy duty and in fine shape!
As I said, my search got easier from reading this forum today, but do I have the right of it? Is my terminology OK? Are the stems a standard size/type? Will I need to buy all these individually?
Thank you very much in advance if anyone has time to read through all this!
Craig Hatfield
We have a 3 knob shower/tub fixture setup, and the hot water was leaking when we bought the house. The knob was being turned tighter and tighter to lessen the leaking and eventually there was a fairly constant stream. (which was running back through the wall and soaking the framing in-between that bathroom and the closet behind it! But that's another story, and it's all dry now.)
I removed the plastic/decorative "H" cover to get at the screw behind the knob and the screw head sheared and fell off at the sight of the phillips head! Both the hot and cold had to be drilled out to get the knobs off, and only then could the difficult job of getting the stems out begin. There was quite a bit of deposit built up on all three, and the hot water side was obviously the most difficult to get off.
So, we have all three removed and my question is what to do now? I've read through these forums today, so I'm much more familiar than I was about what I'm doing at all. I'm assuming I removed the 'stems' and that the 'seats' should theoretically be in there still, if I use a flashlight to see them. The hot water side should be damaged, which was causing that leaking in the first place. (?) Now the stems are broken because I had to drill to get them off. (?) The footprint of the current setup is 11 inches, whereas most new sets you buy at Home Depot and the like are 8 or 9 inches, so we've decided to try and just replace and use what we have.
Have I entered the world of custom plumbing? I assume I need to buy new seats, stems and knobs/fixtures to go on the outsides of them. Is this something that is easy to come by? Most people at stores in our area only know how to sell you a box including what is behind the wall, which in our case is older, but very heavy duty and in fine shape!
As I said, my search got easier from reading this forum today, but do I have the right of it? Is my terminology OK? Are the stems a standard size/type? Will I need to buy all these individually?
Thank you very much in advance if anyone has time to read through all this!
Craig Hatfield