Service
Shower Repair
Repairing showers that drip, run cold, lose pressure or leak into the structure, which are four faults with four different causes.
- Licensed and insured
- Price agreed before work
- A plumber who works your area
Four symptoms, four different parts
Almost every shower complaint maps to one component, and matching them saves opening things unnecessarily.
Dripping when off. The valve cartridge. Its seals no longer close fully. Usually replaceable from the front, no tiling disturbed.
Weak flow. The head, in the overwhelming majority of cases. Mineral scale gradually blocks the small outlets.
Temperature swings when another fixture runs. The mixing or pressure-balancing valve, or the absence of one on an older installation.
Water appearing below. Frequently not plumbing at all: grout, silicone or a failed pan.
Starting with the head costs minutes. Starting by opening a wall costs a great deal more, and it is the wrong first move most of the time.
Front access is usually possible
The assumption that fixing a shower valve means removing tiles puts people off having it done, and it is generally wrong.
Most modern valve bodies are designed so the cartridge, the seals and the trim can all be serviced from the front, through the opening the trim plate covers. The valve body itself stays in the wall.
Tiling only comes into it when the valve body has failed, when the installation is old enough to have no serviceable cartridge, or when a leak is coming from the pipework behind rather than the valve.
Worth establishing which of those you have before assuming the worst.
Does this sound familiar?
Problems this service solves
- A shower that drips continuously when turned off
- Water that swings hot and cold during use
- Weak flow from the shower head only
- Water escaping from the enclosure into the floor
- A diverter that will not send water to the head
Signs you need shower repair
If more than one of these is true, the problem is usually past the point a plunger or a store-bought cleaner will fix.
- The shower drips long after it is turned off
- Temperature changes when another tap is used
- Pressure at the shower is poor but fine elsewhere
- There is damp in the room below the shower
What to expect
How the visit works
Match the symptom to the part
A drip is the valve cartridge. Weak flow is usually the head. Temperature swings are the mixing valve. They are not interchangeable.
Clean or replace the head first
Descaling or replacing a head takes minutes and fixes most pressure complaints without opening a wall.
Service the valve
Cartridges wear and scale up. Most are replaceable from the front without tiling being disturbed, which is worth establishing before anything is cut.
Check the enclosure, not just the plumbing
Water reaching the floor below often comes from failed grout or a bad seal rather than from any pipe.
What's included
What you get on every job, whoever we send.
- The right part identified from the symptom
- Head and cartridge tried before anything is opened
- Front-access repair used where the valve allows it
- Enclosure failures identified rather than mistaken for pipework
Questions
Shower Repair questions
My shower drips after I turn it off. Which part is it?
The valve cartridge, in almost every case. It is the component that shuts the water off inside the valve body, and its seals wear and scale up over years until they no longer close completely. Most cartridges are replaceable through the front of the valve without touching any tiling, which makes it a much smaller job than people expect. A dripping shower also wastes a surprising amount of hot water.
The water goes cold when someone flushes a toilet. Why?
Because the shower valve cannot hold its mix when the cold supply is drawn away. A pressure-balancing or thermostatic valve is designed to compensate, and when it stops doing so it is usually scale on the internal mechanism or a failed cartridge. On an older valve with no balancing at all, the answer is a valve upgrade rather than a repair, since the design never had that protection.
Only the shower has poor pressure. What is that?
The head, almost always. Shower heads have small outlets and they scale up gradually with mineral deposits, which reduces flow long before anyone connects the two. Soaking the head in descaler, or simply replacing it, restores it. If a clean head does not fix it, the next candidate is the valve cartridge, which can also scale internally and restrict flow.
Related services
Shower Valve Repair
Repairing shower mixing valves that drip, stick, will not hold temperature or have scaled up internally, usually without disturbing any tiling.
See what this coversShower Leak Repair
Finding where a shower is leaking, since the pipework is innocent more often than not and the cause is grout, a pan or a waste seal.
See what this coversShower Drain Cleaning
Clearing shower wastes and trays that pool water, including hair blockages at the strainer and restrictions further along the branch.
See what this coversWater Heater Repair
Diagnosis and repair of gas, electric and tankless water heaters, including no-hot-water calls, leaks, pilot problems and sediment flushing.
See what this covers
Get it fixed
Shower Repair, handled locally
Call with your ZIP code and what you are seeing. We route you to a licensed plumber in your area who does shower repair every week.
- Licensed and insured
- Answered 24/7
- Price before work