Be kinde to folk. This changeth the whole habitat.
- Manlobbi
Outskirts of Shrewd'm / Help with this Silly House
No. of Recommendations: 1
We have been having trouble with the shower water temp. There are three valves (in the wall, which I can't get to). One is on/off (and pressure), the second is head selection (we have three heads: body jets, rainhead, hand-held), and temperature. It's the temperature that has been flakey. A small tweak counterclockwise and it gets cold. Opposite, it gets hot. There is no "warm".
Well, having just got back from a trip, we turned it on. On the hot side (if I tweak it), very little pressure (on full-blast). On the cold side, plenty of pressure. The hot lines seems to have cleared out the air (it sputtered a bit, and I ran both vanity sinks until they stopped sputtering). But still no hot pressure in the shower (sinks are fine).
Time to call a plumber? I'm assuming the valve is bad, but I don't know if there may be some air left in the shower line. It's not sputtering anymore. I doubt it could resist being pushed out by the water, so I'm thinking temp valve.
Thoughts?
(Note to self: turn off hot water heater before going on a trip...we left it on so daughter could use it, but she didn't much anyway)
No. of Recommendations: 3
Interesting update.
So I cleaned out the water heater (incorrectly, but that's a different post). Because I had a valve on in the house (incorrect!), the house lines drained. When I was done, I closed it, reactivated the water heater, and after some burping at the taps, water flowed. Including at the shower. Either some debris was dislodged when the lines drained, or some sort of air bubble was "stuck" in there. Either way, hot water is flowing again.
And next time I know how to drain a water heater...had to plumber out to deal with a different problem (warranty), and he verbally told me what I was doing wrong.
No. of Recommendations: 4
More update.
So, that didn't last long. The temp controller resumed its old behavior pretty shortly after. As this was winter (my previous post was in October), the tweak which gave really hot water was OK. A bit too hot, but OK.
Well...fast forward to a few weeks ago, we finally let the plumbers install a new water softener. Ours was about 15 years old, and from what I read, you can only expect a resin bed to last 10-15 years. Especially with chlorine in the water (which we have city-wide). While they were installing it, I mentioned our annoying temperature controller. The apprentice, in between following instructions from the main guy, said "it's probably the cartridge".
Didn't know the temp controller had a cartridge! So, after some rummaging around, I ended up contacting the manufacturer and sent a photo. As we are the original owners, it is 100% warrantied. They identified the model based on the photo, and sent a new cartridge that was compatible. I did a little research and learned that if I had to pay for that cartridge, it would have been ~$130.
So...remove the handles, cut the silicone seal for the faceplate, and remove the set screw for the cartridge. Pull out old cartridge, put in new one, put it back together, and seal the faceplate with a bead of silicone.
It works. We now have a continuum of temperature control.
