Took me 6 hours to replace a single shower valve and I still don't know what I did wrong

I decided last Saturday to swap out an old shower valve in my guest bathroom thinking it would be a quick afternoon job. My buddy said it would take maybe 2 hours tops if everything lined up. Well 6 hours later I had water spraying from three different spots I didn't even touch and had to run to Home Depot twice for adapters I didn't know existed. Turns out the pipe threads were some weird non-standard size from the 80s and nothing I had fit. I finally got it sealed with a ton of Teflon tape and pipe dope but I'm still not confident it won't leak later. Has anyone else run into a simple plumbing fix that turned into a whole day project?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_wesley1mo ago

The real issue nobody talks about is how builders in the 80s used whatever pipe they had leftover from other jobs. I've seen three different thread standards in one house from that decade. Your valve probably wasn't defective, the whole plumbing system was working against you from the start. That non-standard thread thing is why I keep a drawer full of random brass fittings I'll never use again. Next time check if the pipe is actually copper or if it's some cheap chrome plated brass that corrodes different. A thread gauge costs ten bucks and saves you six hours of headache.

robin5911mo ago

That chrome plated brass thing bit me hard once. I spent a whole weekend chasing a leak that turned out to be the plating flaking off inside the fitting, not even a thread issue. A thread gauge is cheap insurance but so is a good magnet to check if that pipe is actually what it looks like.

violar351mo agoMost Upvoted

The thread gauge thing is real but then you gotta figure out if it's NPT or BSPT and by that point I'm just staring at the pipe like it owes me money lol. My uncle still has a coffee can full of mismatched fittings from the 80s he swears "might come in handy someday.