What's the failure here (plumbing)

RatLabGuy

RatLabGuy

You look like a monkey and smell like one too
Joined
May 18, 2005
Location
Churchville, MD
Have a shower w/ the single-dial style handle/valve, when you turn it counterclockwise it goes from off to cold to hot. Delta brand fixture, nothing fancy.
just bought the house, from what I'm told it's all brand new, never used.

Well aparently it won't get "hot". Turn full left, it will get kind of warm, but def not hot. The sink fixture right next to it is the 2-handle style, running hot-only is def very hot (I even turned up the t-stat on the heater to be sure).

hard to tel lfor sure, but to me, the far left "hot" on te hshower dial feels teh same as both valves wide open on the sink.
under the house there are seperate valves for the lines going up to teh shower - if I shut either off, it will run at a trickle, and seems about an equal trickle regardless of which I switch. Cutting the cold does make the remaining trickle hot. Add it back on though, it's just warm even on far left.

I've never seen the inside of one of these units or how the valve works - but I assume that the 2 lines come into a single bal valve, and as you rotatet he knob, it opens the cold side, then opens the hot side, then closes the cold side again?
Is it possible that the cold is never closing off? I *think* that would explain this behavior. Is this a common failure of the fixture?
 
The fixture prob has a "scald prevention" where it will only allow the hot side to open up so far, preventing you from burning yourself. Most new fixtures have this in it, it might need to be adjusted.
 
NCDieselWrench said:
The fixture prob has a "scald prevention" where it will only allow the hot side to open up so far, preventing you from burning yourself. Most new fixtures have this in it, it might need to be adjusted.
Click to expand...

hmm... sooo... how would I know? Have to pull the whole thing off/apart?
The thing is, as I said, if I cut the cold lien going in, it IS getting how water through.

It looks like the total rotational distance from off to as far as I can go is right about 90 degrees.
 
pull the handle off. You'll see teeth in there and a thing that is set between teeth that stops the handle from being turned too far to hot. Readjust that and you're good.
 
Yup, that did it, thanks.
For some reason I still can't rotate that thing so it is clearly 100% hot (not that i'd really want this) but my wife likes her showers hot, it gets to a positions where teh splines wonrealign anymore (??).
is there anything keeping me from just removing that little crosspin and bypassing ths whole thing?
 
the mixing valve os only going to go so far for liability purposes.
To replace, you either have an access om the opposite wall or you are tearing up surrounding tile,fiberglass etc.
 
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