My bathroom tub fixtures have seen better days. Pretty sure they’re original to the house (~60 years). We have fairly hard water, and the prior owners were not the best at maintenance so no clue how long these slow leaks have been going on. But the shower handle is stuck hard on the valve, and the bath spigot is crumbling away and similarly fused in place. Hot and cold come off easily.
Does anyone have any tips for freeing the one handle and spigot? I’ve tried light tapping with a mallet on the back of the handle to no avail. The spigot seems bound pretty tightly, to the point where I’m concerned about damaging the pipe if I apply too much torque.
As for the leaks, I haven’t decided if I’m going to just replace the valves, or try fiddling with/replacing the packing nuts. This is my first time messing with plumbing, but either way seems straightforward enough after watching a few videos.
Any tips/tricks/suggestions appreciated, thanks!
There’s set screws on the flanges. I didn’t think to look for one under the spigot… but no dice. Likewise on the shower knob. Not even sure where one would be hiding. The hot and cold just have an easily accessible screw fixing them to the valves. I do appreciate the suggestion though.
Total tangent… it’s midnight here and I need to shower before bed. But part of me wants to turn off the water and start messing with stuff lol.
Edit: goddamn ADHD. Here’s the fixtures:
Hot and cold come right off. The shower won’t budge. Also, yuck.
Ugh, difficult one. You might have to remove some of the tiles to replace/fix them. Might be possible to carefully open only a small section to get to the pipes and then install a larger shower panel on top, hiding the broken tiles behind it.
I’m not sure why I would need to remove the tiles? Unless it’s to have room for leverage to remove the shower knob.
The shower knobs are part of a valve assembly that is likely directly connected to the pipes below the tiles. Unless you are lucky to somehow find spare-parts for this specific 50 year old model, you will have to fully replace it.
It’s anyway an odd design as the mixer seems to be below the tiles as well, making it nearly impossible to replace or fix. Like wtf were people thinking back then?
A modern standard design only has two 1/2" threaded connections (for hot and cold water) exposed through the tiles, and everything else is external, so that there is no need to touch the tiles or the pipes below when fixing or replacing the armature.
Edit: going by some other remarks, this is in the US and it isn’t actually a house with real concrete or brick walls, but rather those cheap drywall contraptions people think are houses? In that case you might be able to open it up from the backside and access it from there, which would explain why they went for such an extremely bad design.