Today's big project was to fix a shower that was leaking. Unfortunately, there was no access panel to be able to get to the old shower valve, so I had to cut a hole into the drywall, which was screwed onto some sort of lapped wood. That was very odd, but it's hard to tell how a 175 year old building was originally designed. Once I got into the wall, I discovered that there were two sets of copper lines in the wall. One set appeared to be going into the apartment above and one set appeared to be coming down to the shower. I later discovered that the supply lines are in the ceiling and both sets of lines were coming down from the ceiling.
I removed both sets of lines and the shower valve. I then installed the new shower valve and installed new sections of PEX pipe with Sharkbite connectors. Sharkbite connectors are instant connectors that will connect copper, PEX, or CPVC pipe instantly, without gluing, soldering, or any other type of bonding. Just slip them together and they're done! I also decided to install 4 shutoff valves on the lines, so that the water could be more easily maintained in the future.
Once I turned the water back on, I discovered that I had a significant leak out of the bottom of the new shower valve. So, I took everything back apart and put some thread tape on the plug in the bottom of the valve. I put everything back together only to discover that the plug was still leaking. So, once again, I took everything apart and applied a thicker layer of thread tape to the plug. The third time was a charm and everything was dry.
To finish up the job, I made an access panel to cover the hole I made in the wall. This access panel will make it easy to work on the shower and to reach the shutoff valves if ever necessary in the future.
This job should have taken an hour, but ended up taking about 2 hours. With that, I was done for the day.
We're going camping for the next 3 days and I wanted to get a headstart on loading up the motorhome.
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