How do I take the old spigot or faucet out of the tub part of my home one-piece tub/shower? The thing is about 30 years old and very corroded along its bottom and I suspect it is the cause of the leak below the bathroom.
There are no fasteners or other clues. I have tried to rotate it CCW to see if it is threaded, and have not made it shift at all. I bet I got about 30 or 40 foot-pounds of torque on it. I’m afraid to twist it any harder for fear of ripping out whatever it is attached to. My home plumbing is sweated copper, and it is constructed with the thin wall copper that is only legal for low pressure recirculated hot water heating, not for supply. My whole house is cheaply and poorly constructed, and home repair projects often turn south because more and more of the house falls apart when I try to remove one little thing.
Can I just start cutting it off at the tip and work my way back until I can see something I can work on?
One like this?
There will either be an allen screw on the bottom that you loosen or the entire thing is threaded. If you don’t see the set screw on the bottom, put a pipe/hammer or wrench handle in the end of the spigot for leverage, and turn the whole thin counter clockwise. Be sure to use not just the lever, but turn it with your hand as well so you don’t just snap the end off. It’ll take some muscle, but that’s how you do it.
ETA, don’t cut the end off unless it’s really stuck and that’s a last resort. You need the end for leverage as I said earlier. If you resort to cutting it, we can come up with some other ideas.
Here’s a good picture, but I like to use something bigger then a screwdriver so you don’t end up tearing the end of the spigot. As I said above the handle of a hammer or wrench works well. Also, this is more important for installing when you don’t want to leave marks. When you take it out, by all means, go nuts with a giant channel lock pliers and leave all the marks you want on it.
i’ve seen just a few locking threads on spigots that water seal with O rings. you push it on until just before hitting the wall and a few twists to lock it on. so to remove it is a few turns with little movement and then twist and pull until it’s off.
Joey P, that looks right, but simpler in that there is no button in the end (the diverter for the shower is in the escutcheon under the control knob).
I’m going to look very closely for signs of an Allen screw on the bottom, and apply a wrench to the assembly if I don’t see one. In fact I will apply two, grabbing the body, the handles pointed opposite one another, so I can apply torque without putting any sideways forces on the assembly.
What do the threads it mates with look like? What I am getting at is, what holds them still? Does the torque pass through my copper pipe, or is there some bracket attached to studs or something stronger like that?
one i saw was a metal adapter soldered on a copper pipe, near the wall was maybe 4 threads (in a small larger diameter area, a collar) and tubside of that an O ring (on the adapter). spout was pushed on until it hit the threads and then screwed the very short distance to hit the wall.
i’ve seen with a locking screw like Joey P described where the O ring was in the spout and it just pushed onto the copper pipe.
i think you got the spout option in your style to mate with threaded iron pipe or a long or short copper pipe.
the spout and shower head might be on stubs secured with pipe brackets. the valve may have screw holes to fasten into the wood.
I got the spout to turn about 1/4 turn, and then it started tilting with respect to the wall, exposing about 1/4" of space between spout and wall, enough for me to get a saw blade and tinsnips in there to start cutting away at the thin metal of the spout (NOT sawing through the copper pipe now visible at its center). So I cut away what turns out to be a large metal skirt that forms the body of the spout, exposing the copper pipe, all the way up to the end. The copper pipe ends soldered into a male adapter, on which the spout was originally threaded. These threads have not shifted at all; instead, the middle third of the copper pipe has twisted like a drill bit, and partly collapsed. It also started to bend, which is why the thing tilted.
I still have the female threaded portion of the spout on the end of this pipe, too. Now there are flats exposed on the male adapter. They were hidden deep inside the spout before I cut it away, and would never have been available to a wrench, until now.
I think I should try, by use of penetrating oil and perhaps careful sawing and grinding, to remove this jagged metal tire from the copper threads. If this works, I might be able to straighten the pipe without breaking it. Whether it would be functional with some twist and in a partially collapsed state remains to be seen.
This pipe just disappears through approximately a 1" hole in the shower/tub enclosure. As far as I can tell, to replace it would require taking out drywall in the room behind the bathroom, or cutting away some of the waterproof enclosure.
you could get a spout type that has internal O rings and pushes onto a copper pipe stub, would have a locking screw as Joey P described. then you would need to add a few inches of copper pipe totally outside the wall.
the adapter you have might be spout or brand specific and have corroded threads and so not reusable easily.
Moving right along. I got the jagged little tire off the threads by grinding and sawing at it. But then I tried to straighten the pipe, and it developed a split running about a half inch along its length, in the area that twisted.
Johnpost, if I can get a spout that pushes onto a pipe stub, and IF there is enough good copper pipe left to push onto, then that would work. How much do they need? Where should I look to find the one that requires the least?
For future reference, what would a plumber have done differently from the start in this situation?
I have 0.44" of good pipe sticking out of the wall before the folded and split portion. Will a slip fit spout work on that? I’m going to guess, “no”.
In hindsight, I think I should have begun by sawing the end of the entire assembly off, and taking additional cuts further and further back from the end, until it came loose. If I had done that from the start, I’d now have a few inches of good pipe sticking out of the wall to slip a spout over.
find that type of push on spout and see what length of naked pipe is required.
you may be left with too little of a stub to work with. you would need to extend it with a coupling and a few inches of pipe. you would solder a coupling and a few inches of pipe to the stub from the wall; you might actually need to cut the stub shorter (and put the coupling closer to the wall) so the naked pipe can go into the O rings (the coupler may not fit into the O rings).
above was before your message 10.
you might be able to solder a coupling on that short stub totally from the front. you can get small flame resistant fabric squares to protect wood and other material while you are soldering with a torch near them for short periods.
Hmmm. Well, I got it straight with fairly clean threads and two fairly fine cracks running a short distance along its length. So I cleaned it up bright and shiny, and put epoxy on the outside, spreading two coats over the cracks. After all, this is a finger’s length from an open end of the pipe anyway, so there’s no pressure - what’s to lose?
