How to do-it-yourself instructional on repairing a leaky bathtub faucet. Shows steps required for removing and rebuilding valve stems.
Transcript provided for the hearing impaired:
Hi. Today on Repairs101 we’re going to fix a very common problem in the bathroom. We’ve got a real dripper on our hands. Take these apart, show you what’s inside but of course first a quick trip to the basement to find the valves to shut off the water. these old valves are quite sticky. We’ll just turn this one down as well. do a quick inspection–some kind of rust pattern forming indicating that this elbow needs to be replaced. we’ve been down to spider-land and back and the water’s still gurgling but we’ll just release the pressure … these are wide open and there’s still a little gurgle going on so what that indicates is that those valves downstairs aren’t doing their job. saw me turn off the valves that supply these valves those valves leaked so these valves were still leaking … so this is a pretty old house, it was built in 1940 and it seems all the valves are all dried out and I had to turn off the water to the house. start by popping off these covers giving us access to the inside. take a regular screwdriver and pop it off. Look inside: Phillips head screwdriver. I’m just going to unwind these, get the handles off. Oh that’s tight. we can access the valve stem bodies. three quarter inch deep socket. And there you go. Focus? Oh yeah. What a mess, eh? OK you can see that that bushing is just about shredded. So no wonder it wasn’t holding water anymore. Now I’ll get the hot one out as well and I’ll show you how to rebuild them. You see they come out real easy when you have the right tools. this one is all but annihilated as you can see the metal is starting to erode and there’s virtually no rubber left there at all. so I’m just going to feel around very gently — try not to cut myself — and see if I can see any reason why these are self-destructing or if because of age. I can feel the valve seat does not feel sharp so I’m going to guess that those were just really old bushings. try the other one. we’re going to gently probe around in here a little bit. Again, I don’t feel anything particularly sharp but you can see the blackness on my fingertip, that’s the bushing deteriorated and making a deposit inside here. OK I’m going to film right here over the sink because it really is the best lighting and the best background. But if you’re going to do something over the sink –sure you put the plug in because you really don’t want to lose any parts down there. First thing is we’re going to undo that screw and pull off the bushing. You can see it comes out easy and the bushing is all but destroyed. Just in comparison, that’s our bushing that just came out, you can see the big crack in it. And that’s what a new bushing looks like. So I’ll just take the other one and also take that screw out and that bushing off. This bushing is in a little bit better shape than the first one. Out came the screw and there you go. There’s the bushing, Pull the screw out of it. As you can see, that’s our pair of bushings.We take our little dome shaped bushing, on the back it says quarter inch. So we just drop it in with the tapered side facing against the seat that it’s going to seal. And you simply install the retaining screw back in. Piece of cake.Just do that down snug and we’re done. so we’ll just rebuild the other one, snap it all back together and we’ll turn the water on and see if it doesn’t leak. I’ve got my valve stems rebuilt and I’m ready to drop them back in. those are both down and I’m just going to snug the valve stems into the valve bodies but I have to be very careful of course it’s only brass. I’m choking up on the socket wrench like this in order to limit the amount of torque I can put on it. handle sits on this splined end of the valve stem and there’s a female splined plastic piece on the inside of the handle to receive it. need to line it up and it pops right into place, as you heard, and then we go back in with that old screw and just wind it in. You know you’re tight when the handle starts turning with the screw. that’s nice and tight and just nice and easy there I can feel the nice seal with the new rubber. you don’t want to overdo it because that’s what shredding up these seals in the first place. I’ll move over to the hot side… the water’s back on. As you can see and hear, our drip is fixed. so with just a little bit of my time, the right tools and a couple of these very inexpensive bushings — problem is solved. I was able to do something that would have otherwise cost a couple of hundred dollars to have somebody else come in and do. the whole point behind this website: help you do repairs, save some money, save the environment by not having to throw things out, by repairing them, by getting more use out of them.
10
Sep