My shower is dripping. As in, leaking a bit. Drip, drip, drip. It’s not the shower head, it’s the… pipe-y part. Near the knobs. Does that part have name? I don’t know.
My landlord is supposed to get it fixed, and he has said that he’s going to. But I don’t know when or if he’ll get around to it. Meanwhile, it just kind of vaguely bothers me.
How much water goes down the drain every from a shower dripping like that? Then again, does it matter? When I shower, water goes down the drain, too. Presumably, it all works out. It goes back into the world, right? It doesn’t disappear into a worm hole or anything. In the words of George Costanza, it’s all pipes.
Apologies if I sound like I just arrived on the planet yesterday, but I haven’t really ever thought much about pipes or plumbing before. It feels like the universe is slightly out of balance. Should I worry about this? Can you guys put my mind at ease, or the other thing?
And yeah, mundane and pointless. But that’s what it says on the tin, so…
I should have known - there is actually an online drip calculator, courtesy of the American Water Works Association. And even though it’s a 'merkin site, it will calculate in various furrin units of measure. One drip per second adds up to 8.64 US gallons per day, 259.2 per 30 day month and 3153.6 gallons per year.
My guess is that this is on the bottom of his task list.
I think you should create a worse problem that he cant put off until later to draw him in… like break the flushing device in the toilet, call him and tell him the toilet is broken and there’s no way you can use it and need it fixed ASAP it’s an emergency… or else you’ll have no other choice than to void in the yard.
Then when he shows up to fix the toilet… you can say something like “oh while you’re here can you fix the shower leak?” Both things should be cheap and easy fixes.
The fix for this is to unscrew the connection, remove the old Teflon tape from the threads (assuming any was used in the first place) reapply some new Teflon tape and screw the joint back together. It’s a fairly easy DIY.
Our shower was doing that when we moved into this house. The house had been empty for two months, dripping all the while. It had been dripping two months earlier when we toured the house. Who knows how many years it had been dripping before that. The shower floor was sea-green from copper salt buildup.
My husband had to bring out a blowtorch and the really good version of WD-40, but he got whatever hardware involved off, put in new hardware, and now it’s fine. Full disclosure: he broke off the original shower knobs before he brought out the blowtorch.
Huh. I guess I should probably just fix it myself, then.
Although I am a bit worried about having to tell my landlord later that I completely clusterbollixed something, and now my furniture is swimming with the fishes. DIY stuff isn’t exactly my comfort zone.
That really depends on which threaded connection is dripping. Remember, your getting your info from someone who doesn’t know the name of the parts. For example, it could be dripping from some decorative threaded part (like an index screw), but in reality, the mixing valve needs to be rebuilt or replaced. It could be a 5 minute fix or it could mean tearing out the tile to dig it out of the wall.
This is one of those times where it’s great to live in an apartment, something breaks and you get to call a guy who can fix it for free. If he puts it off and it ruins the drywall ceiling below you, it doesn’t cost you a bunch of extra money.
Also, if the actual sound of dripping is bothering you, you might try putting a towel in the tub to minimize the sound. If that doesn’t work, try wrapping a towel around the part where it’s dripping to create a path down to the tub. One of those two methods should help quiet it down.
I wouldn’t try fixing it yourself. You’ll be much happier having a dripping shower than no shower or having to tell the landlord you botched the job trying to fix it yourself and he charges you. Also, if you do try to fix it, make sure you shut the water off before you unscrew anything. If you don’t have access to the hot and cold shut offs, don’t attempt this. Once you remove something and water is spraying out, you’re not going to get it back on.
I dunno, what’s he planning to unscrew?
I know what I think the “pipe-y part near the knobs” is (the tub spout), but you can reapply teflon tape to that all day long, it’s not going to make it stop leaking. Water only leaks if the valves aren’t fully closing.
OTOH, you might be thinking of a different part. But to the best of my knowledge, there’s no way to stop a leak that doesn’t involve taking pressure off the system so you can rebuild or replace a valve. If the valve worked properly there wouldn’t be a leak.
ETA, when he said that water’s dripping from the pipe-y part near the knobs, I’m assuming it’s coming from this pipe. Is that what you’re thinking as well?
That’s why the question of what exactly is dripping is important here. OP says it’s the threaded part near the knobs that’s dripping. Does it get worse when the water is turned on? Could be the cartridge(s), could be something else.
I had a dripping issue with both the hot and cold water knobs. Behind the knob and before the wall. What’s that called, I dunno.
Since I’m in an apartment and the only way to shut off the shower water is to shut off the building, my landlord opted to change the knobs without shutting off the water. So he took the knobs off. Water squirted from the wall for about 15 minutes while he took them downstairs to the office and found parts that matched. Since it was the bathtub, I guess not a big deal since the water was nicely contained in the large basin.
Maybe the same sort of fix needs to happen for the OP. Maybe not. Since we can’t be sure without pics being posted, I think it’s a tough call.
OP, you could also tie a string around the part that’s leaking, with the end touching the basin. The water will follow it down and you won’t hear a drip. Hearing a drip would bug me for sure!
See, that’s where the miscommunication happens. I think of the spout or faucet as being such an obvious thing that everyone knows the name of, or can describe as where the water comes out when it’s not coming from the shower head, that it must not be what the OP is talking about and it must instead be the stems of the control knobs. It seems to me those could also be thought of as pipe-y parts.
Ah shit. Never mind. I misread the OP. “My shower is dripping” immediately made me think of the actual shower head. So, it’s not the shower that is dripping; it’s the bathtub taps! :smack:
ETA: In other words, nvm.
Not sure how clear that is, but it’s the connection between the… whatever that is called, and the wall.
In any case, Joey P has scared me away from the idea of messing with it. I’ll just leave it, until the landlord shows up. That is, as long as it’s not somehow screwing up the global water cycle or something. I don’t hear it outside the bathroom.
I dunno. It’s mainly just weirding me out in a vaguely existential way. If it’s OK to be zen about it, then I’ll be good, I suppose.
If it’s leaking from that nut and it were my house (that I own), the first thing I would do is to get a wrench and try tightening it just a little bit and see if that stops it. If it doesn’t, this could be as simple as shutting the water off, backing off the nut, retaping it and tightening it back down OR, it could be as complicated as removing that whole setup/manifold/mixing valve (I never something quite like that) to get at it, retaping both of them and hopping the nipple stays attached to whatever it’s attached to behind those covers.
It’ll really depend on how much play there is when that nut is backed off. That’s what will decide if the whole thing has to be removed. And, yes, the water will have to be shut off to do this.
It’s something you certainly want fixed. It’s not an emergency. It’s something I wouldn’t think about unless I was in the bathroom where it would remind me. If it were me, I’d remind the landlord weekly - but that’s just because if/when I call about something like this they always fix it the next day so I’d remind them after a week because it would be weird that it wasn’t fixed yet.
