Boys Shower Part 1 - Down the Valve Hole

After some frustrating expiences with plumbers in the area (related to both cost and competence), I decided to take matters into my own hands and just do my own plumbing. The first thing I wanted to do is fix my hot water re-circulation pump. I first suspected the pump itself or the new check valve to be the cause of the issue. However, after multiple experiments involving turning various water valves on and off throughout the house, including draining the entire house a couple of times. The current hypothesis is that one or more of the shower valves are bad which causes water to cross over from the cold to hot side. 

This led me to attempt to replace the shower valve cartridge in the boy's shower. After sitting in the same place for over 20 years being filled with hard water, the valve was pretty calcified. I wasn't able to remove the cartridge, even with a special tool designed specifically for that purpose, and in the process I created, or worsened a minor leak.


At this point I wasn't really sure what to do because I didn't want to leave the shower continuously dripping and there didn't seem to be a way to fix it.  I watched some videos of people replacing the shower valve from the wall behind which allows the shower itself and the tile to remain undamaged, however, after some measurements and experiments, I found that the placement of our chimney is behind this shower which means it would be difficult or impossible to fix this from the other side.

So after some thinking I decided to just go all-in and remodel the entire shower.  The next step was to break the tiles, open the wall, remove the old valve, and cap off the hot and cold lines to prevent water going everywhere.





After cutting the pipes, I installed shark-bit caps which don't require any soldering, and I can just remove later when I want to reconnect everything.


At this point, I was happy that at least I don't have leaking.  I also tried the hot water re-circulation pump again, to see if this valve was the problem, but no luck.  I now suspect the issue to be my daughter's shower valve, which I probably should have guessed in the beginning because she seemed to have the least issues with hot water when the pump doesn't work.

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