I know this probably a stupid question, but I ain’t no plumber. My shower has separate knobs for hot and cold. The hot knob is getting so dog gone hot that it takes a towel to turn it off. It is a combo tub/shower unit with separate hot and cold handles and yah turn the shower on by pulling the thingie in the spout. Oh Yeah, there’s hot water running out the handle when the showers on.
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Either tighten the packing nut on the hot water knob shaft or call a plumber or handyman to do the same. Might take a washer of O ring etc.
Water should not be coming out the handle. If you're lucky, it is all falling in the tub, not leaking insoide the wall, rotting your studs ...
"When asked if you can do something, tell'em "Why certainly I can", then get busy and find a way to do it." T. Roosevelt
yeah---there could be a seal bad, which shouldn't be too hard to fix. Just shut off the valve before you open it up. Like Eddie said, water could be leaking inside the wall.
Also, if it is that hot, then maybe you should turn down the temp on your water heater.
When in doubt, get a bigger hammer!
You could do a simple packing fix as suggested, but from the sound of the rest of it, you might think about a major bathroom remodel. This one is way overdue.
-- J.S.
You could do a simple packing fix as suggested, but from the sound of the rest of it, you might think about a major bathroom remodel. This one is way overdue.
Reading between the lines_??
Kinda a big jump from the info supplied....... He hasn´t even found out if any water leaked into the wall, and even then that is not nesecarily a major remodel......
My point being===lets not freak the guy out! Not yet at least!
When in doubt, get a bigger hammer!
...whew, I was gonna say . rip the floor out ,
but I ain't no plumber neither. just be sure the powers off"
hahahaWhen in doubt, get a bigger hammer!
....Yeah, or at least wrap a rag around the handle so it doesn't spray all over the place ( ;>o"
Edited 9/28/2005 5:56 pm ET by maddog3
That would be a problem since it's a slab foundation. Guess I better look for the leak under the kitchen sink too, since it's the same wall.
it's a slab foundation.
Sounds like a great opportunity to add a heavy duty chipping hammer to your arsenal. Maybe a nice big Hilti. Or go the Junkhound/VaTom route and buy a Bobcat with a rampac attachment.
Don't stop now, there's work to be done!
"When asked if you can do something, tell'em "Why certainly I can", then get busy and find a way to do it." T. Roosevelt
....oh, you're on a slab?"
> Reading between the lines_??
Yup. When you find an old two knobber, especially one that leaks, it's good to step back and consider the big picture.
-- J.S.
It sounds like your hot water heater is set way too hot. You shouldn't be getting scalded even if your fixtures are leaking.
you are right on the money, fix the hot water problem then work on the other, no way should hot water reach a point where you can't touch it. Good call. 'MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU'.
no way should hot water reach a point where you can't touch it.
Huh? If you can touch it, bro, it isn't hot--it's warm.
I don't see the letter W on my faucet knob. And I don't want to, either. Hot water standard temperature until the padded-world weenies started taking over was about 140F. This is hot enough to do a decent job of washing floors, clothes, trucks and so forth. About the first thing I do when installing a new water heater is check the thermostats and adjust as necessary. There's nothing less pleasant than standing under a so-called 'hot' shower with the HW on full blast and the cold turned off tight...and still wanting it hotter. This 120F bullcrap has gotta stop.
The other thing I hate are those damned one-armed bandits. They are what's dangerous, not the water temperature. Kids especially have a lot of trouble adjusting those things. The swing of the lever is just too small, hence a tiny amount of movement gives a huge amount of change. I won't have one in my house.
I just finished half an hour ago designing two new bathrooms for a client who's converting her chalet into a permanent residence. I was pleased to be able to find (finally) decent quality standard faucet sets (Kohler). This lady has already had me change out the one-armed kitchen sink unit for a dual ceramic-cartridge model; she's on an artesian well with hard hard water and those skinny-a$$ tubes the one-arm mixers are plumbed with load up bad in about five years.
No...the O.P. in this thread just needs to replace the washers, cartridge, o-rings or packing on his faucet and he'll be back in business. Telling him to junk the whole bathroom and re-do it to make the weenies happy is not doing him a good turn.
Dinosaur
A day may come when the courage of men fails,when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship...
But it is not this day.
I am sooo with you about those one armed ba****ds. I hate them. But I confess I do have the preset shower temperature control with seperate volume controls, and that I really do like.I had trouble with junk in the water messing up my valves, and I added a two stage whole house filter. I think American Plumber is the brand. One stage is paper and the other is charcoal. It really helps get the crud out of the faucets, and got rid of the chlorine taste too! I haven't had any trouble with cartridges since I did that. The filter unit is not too expensive, about $200 U.S. but replacement cartridge sets are around $90. They last one to two years, depending on the water.
I just installed a whole-house water filter system for a client; charcoal catrtidges that were spec'ed with it by the local expert lasted exactly 4 days. Duh, so I called the mfgr and described the problem and he told me which ones to get.
This client has sand coming up from his well, plus there are sulphur issues. Hard to deal with both with the same unit, but once we take the sand out with a coarse filter we'll see how much smell is left and add a second stage if necessary, using the charcoal this time.
The one armed bandits are taking over, though. It bugs me big time. The problem up here is that this is a very very paternalistic society/government; they love to tell you what to do fer your own good. I was told a couple of days ago by my plumbing sub that licensed plumbers are no longer permitted to install two-faucet mixer sets in new work; so if you want one you will need to call a remod guy like me.
Dinosaur
A day may come when the courage of men fails,when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship...
But it is not this day.
> I was told a couple of days ago by my plumbing sub that licensed plumbers are no longer permitted to install two-faucet mixer sets ....
I don't know how many years it's been since I saw a new two knob bath/shower setup. What has been required here for a while is a pressure balancing unit that adjusts to keep the hot/cold ratio the same even if somebody downstairs flushes the can. We have them, I think the name is Symonds or something like that. They're good, the handle is long, and you have a pretty wide range of motion where the temps are comfortable.
Here, a leaking two knob set would probably be over 30 years old. That led me to wonder whether the whole bathroom may be more than ready for a remodel.
-- J.S.
Allowing somebody to decide if they want to install a one-armed bandit--at the higher cost and shorter life-expentancy which that entails--is one thing.
Requiring that they do so is another.
This is not the sort of code issue that makes a house inherently unsafe, such as insufficient beef in the framing members, undersized wiring in the circuits, or lack of fire-stops in the stud bays. People have been using manual-control hot and cold faucets with no trouble ever since they've been invented, which has got to be well over a hundred years, now. Sure, I've been momentarily lobstered (or refrigerated) once or twice over the last 50-odd years...but it's not the end of the world, and sure doesn't merit a trip to the ER. You just duck out of the way of the water, take a deep breath, and holler 'GODDAMMIT, HONEY!! I'M IN THE SHOWER!!'
You are in much more danger of being scalded by someone who drops a cup of take-out coffee on you at the bus stop, for instance. But the weenies haven't made those illegal.
What this idiocentric society needs is a better sense of perspective and a much greater appreciation of history....
Dinosaur
A day may come when the courage of men fails,when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship...
But it is not this day.
> This is not the sort of code issue that makes a house inherently unsafe....
Yup. I'm just saying what the code here is, not what it oughta be. TBS, I'm happy with the ones we were required to use. I'd probably put them in even if they weren't required.
-- J.S.
TBS, I'm happy with the ones we were required to use. I'd probably put them in even if they weren't required.
I've got no problem a-tall with chacun à son goût as a philosophy. In fact, it's pretty much my own modus vivendi. So if the powers that be tried to tell you you couldn't use those things you like, I'd get right in their face for ya.
But I do think it's important to holler, grouse, bitch, bark, and bite back when the guvmint starts gettin' too big for its britches. If ya don't do that once in a while--just to keep 'em honest--they stop being afraid you might shout 'em down--and once they lose that fear, they're liable to do anything....
Remember the words of the sage: "The less sure of His throne the King feels, the more likely He is to rule justly."
Dinosaur
A day may come when the courage of men fails,when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship...
But it is not this day.
Edited 9/30/2005 9:39 pm ET by Dinosaur
Yeah, I agree. An even better example is the requirement for electrical receptacles outside next to every door. Sure, it's nice to have a place to plug something in. But building codes should only require what's necessary for safety, not stuff that's merely nice. It's called the Department of Building and Safety, not the Department of Building and Convenience.
-- J.S.
We could start a list of dumbbell regs that have nothing to do with building safety.
Burglar-proof front doors (steel, no glass within 3' of the lockset) spring to mind as a start....
Dinosaur
A day may come when the courage of men fails,when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship...
But it is not this day.
I did a bath remodel where the client wanted to use an antique two-handle shower set found at a salvage yard--replated in nickel, very nice. The plumber installed a pressure balancing valve under the sink top to feed the shower set, and the plumbing inspector was happy. I remember that it made some noise and that he had to come back and install a check valve to make it quieter.
I've always assumed that the paper filter was to take out particles, and that charcoal is for taste, which is why I went with the two stage one. I'm surprised a charcoal one lasted 4 days with sand. It would fill up quick. It really is just two bell jars, one after the other. Here is the link, they have a bunch including some marked for "sand seperation"
http://www.plumbingworld.com/filters.html
I use the WWHC and I've been happy with it for 8 or 10 years now.I was in England this summer. I don't think they have even met a mixing valve yet! Almost everything was seperate faucets.
I was in England this summer. I don't think they have even met a mixing valve yet! Almost everything was seperate faucets.
One of the nicest things about the Atlantic Ocean is how well it manages to insulate Europe from some of the goofier stuff we've managed to come up with over here. (Not that they don't have their own goofy stuff, of course, but it's theirs.)
Dinosaur
A day may come when the courage of men fails,when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship...
But it is not this day.
"Hot water standard temperature until the padded-world weenies started taking over was about 140F"
You let those bastards in your house! No way they should be setting the water temp. Git yer shotgun and run 'em out!
You let those bastards in your house! No way they should be setting the water temp. Git yer shotgun and run 'em out!
When somebody comes into my house, I explain to them that they are now subject to my rules and if they don't like that, they are welcome to leave, no hard feelings.
If they don't want to leave, well, I don't own a shotgun, actually. So what I usually do is just light up a cigarette and blow smoke up their, ah, nose. Nothin' scares a padded-world-weenie worse than a small cloud of tobacco smoke...they cut and run right quick....
Dinosaur
A day may come when the courage of men fails,when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship...
But it is not this day.
>>Nothin' scares a padded-world-weenie worse than a small cloud of tobacco smoke...they cut and run right quick.... Ship, I'm a padded world weenie and I smoked Luckies for >30 years.You're really not so tough<G>
View Image
Sojourners: Christians for Justice and Peace
I'm a padded world weenie and I smoked Luckies for >30 years.
You're really not so tough<G>
Luckies. You wimp.
I smoked Camels.
And don't start hollering that I called you a weenie--you did it yourself. I got a screen shot of it, too, heh, heh, heh....
BTW--105F is the temp of the water I use to proof the yeast when I bake bread. I know exactly how warm that feels (I do bread at least once every week or ten days), and either I'm Superman, or your numbers are off by about 10 or 15 degrees.
Well, I'm not Superman. I just looked at my tee-shirt and it says DeWALT, not S.
So, that leaves just one conclusion....
Dinosaur
A day may come when the courage of men fails,when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship...
But it is not this day.
Are we on the same post, if you have to use a towel to turn off a valve, thats hot. Maybe I should have said that there is no way the handle should reach a point where you can't turn it off without a towel. Whoever said to tear everything out was not me, I am innocent, the rest of your post; maybe another day.
relax, bro, the other arguments (tear-outs and twin-faucet vs 1-arm bandits) has indeed nothing to do with you; I just got cranked up and kept on typing, LOL....
I think the reason the guy's knob was too hot to touch is that it's leaking badly, thus allowing lots of hot water to touch a part of the faucet assembly that normally only gets heated up via conduction through the valve stem. The point of contact between the valve stem and the knob is a pretty small surface, so normally the knob doesn't get too hot to 'handle' (pardon the pun).
Dinosaur
A day may come when the courage of men fails,when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship...
But it is not this day.
Hey, waitaminit,
I thought my posts were stupid enough to be ignored , I just felt like saying it !the OP has a problem that was similar to mine, and I eventually tore everything out, ( it was time to remodel any way ) but I am NOT a plumber"
Edited 9/29/2005 6:06 pm ET by maddog3
...uuum, does this count as a strike ?"
op=original poster?Where's the dang breaktime dictionary when you need it?
I copied it from ..........Dinosaur....he said it first...its not my fault,
I didn't write that, I don't know how that happened, I'm NOT a plumber....but I am lazy"
We are on the same page now, a leak in the hot water stem making the handle too hot to touch. Have a good one.
>>This 120F bullcrap has gotta stop.Hottest water most people can stand is about 105.140 will scald to 2nd degree burns in less than 2 seconds.Did an inspection for a guy a couple of months ago hobbling around on feet that had been scalded; he said is was the worst thing that had ever happened to him.Of course, if you want to get to know some lawyers really well, set 'em high!
View Image
Sojourners: Christians for Justice and Peace
I am having the same issue