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[DUNBAR PLUMBING]

On sunday march 28th we received a call from a new customer that was a referral from someone we've done work plumbing work for. The property owner described the situation which was the attempt to replace the inside parts of a 600 series Delta Faucet. This faucet was a shower faucet, and the faucet was leaking out of the shower head.

A common situation with these faucets is the bonnet nut freezing to the body of the faucet, which in turn causes the nut to turn the entire valve body that is assembled with 3 copper tubes. The Delta tub faucet, shower faucet assemblies all used this design until the R10000 valve body was created in order to correct this issue.

The faucet however is durable, it's the unknown discover "after" the fact that when those tubes twist and tear, that is when the valve becomes defective and no longer works.

[DUNBAR PLUMBING]

[DUNBAR PLUMBING]

Depicted in the video above:

We first remove the twisted valve body from the rest of the assembly. The valve is unscrewed from the blocking behind the faucet, then we cut the water lines flush to the valve. Once the valve is removed we then take the torch and heat up the remaining valve body parts that are still soldered to the valve body. This allows us to use the maximum length of the water supply lines in order to avoid using additional fittings to install the new shower valve body.

This is very important as sometimes the use of fittings to install the new valve body is not possible. What is nice about making the switch from Delta old to Delta new is the fact that the valve body is very compatible and makes the new installation far simpler. Now in the above video, the degree of difficulty was high, given the fact that there was a 2X6 wood stud to the immediate left of the faucet. Makes the job far more interesting when someone has decided years ago that placing a stud in the plumbing wall that close to the faucet location is proper? 

Once we realized that the hot water supply line was floating inside the wall, the necessity to remove the wood stud was avoided completely. Some considerable time was put into the reinstallation of the shower faucet, using the new R10000 Delta Valve body.

Once the valve was soldered into position, the rest of the faucet was assembled and the new exterior trim of the faucet was installed. As you see in the pictures, we had to widen the existing hole in the wall to gain full access to the water lines inside behind the tile.

The finished product shows no indication that there was any issue prior to arrival, and no remodel plate or access to the back side of faucet was warranted.

It is often that other plumbers in the profession will not even attempt to work in such a small access point in the wall to repair a shower faucet. We at Dunbar Plumbing offer this ability to not deal with remodel plates on single handle shower faucet replacements.

Before we left this residence, we identified a defective pressure reducing valve located on the main water supply entering the structure. Pressure read 90+ pounds of water pressure at approximately 6pm in the evening. This time of the day is when the majority of property owners and their families are home using their plumbing systems. This pressure reading proved that the pressure reducing valve was defective, as the normal range for a Wilkins 70 3/4" pressure reducing valve is 25-75 pounds.

It was our impression that the high water pressure led to the faucet leaking in the home, along with wear and tear/age of the faucet. Property owner acknowledged this situation and the dangers that are related to high water pressure inside the home.

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Tags: delta faucet  kingsburg court erlanger kentucky  faucet plumbing repair delta faucet repair delta faucet replacement