Replacing a bathtub fixture

[Mosey]

I made the mistake of bringing my wife with me to check out the new Home Depot that just opened in Seymour, IN. "We're just going to go look around", I said. By the time we left we had spent over $100! We got a great deal on a kitchen sink fixture and a bathtub fixture (Delta brand). I got the kitchen sink one done. Now I have this new bathtub fixture to install. It's a new water spout, on/off control, and shower head. How hard is this? Will I need to get to the back side of the tub wall to install this? Or, will I be able to do everything from the tub side? The house has copper water pipes soldered together. Am I going to have to unsolder anything and then solder any of the new stuff, or will everything just screw off and on again?

[Kevin_in_Mi]

Sure hope you have some sort of access panel cause if you don't, you're gonna have to cut one. Depending on how the old valve body is anchored determines which side needs the access. Generally, from my remodeling experience, everything is or was installed from the inside facing the valve.What is on the walls of your shower? Tile Green board, etc. And yes the new valve body has to be soldered.

[AndyF]

What I'm going to say will probably sound like heresy, but if you aren't comfortable with soldering copper pipe, your best bet will be to open up the access panel, clear the area around it and call in a plumber to make the connections for you. It is real easy if you don't have much experience sweating copper joints together to end up with pinhole leaks which will turn this little job into a bigger one and you'll end up wasting a whole day on a simple faucet replacement.

[Mosey]

Kevin_in_MI,

The tub is one of those 1 piece units that goes up about 5' on 3 sides. There's a closet on the other side of the wall where the plumbing is, but I don't see any access panel or anything. Since it's a closet, I could cut one out and it wouldn't show. I guess I'll start there and then I'll be able to see what's in there.

AndyF,

You have a good point. But, I can't afford a plumber! Plus, I believe the best way to learn is by doing. I'm pretty handy with tools and have watched others solder copper pipes. The trick seems to be to make sure the surfaces are clean. I won't consider the day a waste if I learn something new and save a chunk of money!

[AndyF]

You might want to do some practicing in your shop before you start soldering in tight quarters. Being clean is important, but equally important is how you manage your heat. Hotter isn't neccessarily better. You want to heat the pipes as evenly as possible, which for the faucet means a lot more heat on the faucet than the copper pipe. Get a good flux also and use plenty of it.

[GaryM]

And be sure to use crocus cloth or one of those wire brush tools on the surfaces. That copper should shine!

[gator]

Danny,
Pull the stems out before you solder so you don't melt the rubber 'o' rings and seats. When you get in from the back wall, you'll probably find a 2x4 backer the old stems are mounted on nailed between the studs. You can easily remove this by cutting the nails with a sawzall or just a hack saw blade. Mount your new stem assembly to a new 2x4, then solder in (use wet rags on anything you don't want to burn), then just screw the 2x4 backer to studs when you're done.
Piece of cake [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]
Hope this helps.

[knucklehead]

Is this your only tub? You may want to attack this in stages to cut the "down time" to a minimum.

Having rendered several things in our house inoperable for longer than necessary, we have adopted a more sane philosophy. A while ago, I'd have started after a second cup of coffee by unloading the closet, thinking I was going to shower up before Supper. [img]/forums/images/icons/blush.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] I ate a lot of Suppers around midnight, while still unshowered. Now the closet would be the first day's work, making a clean hole, etc., and doing a little snooping about what was behind there, and locating shut off valves, setting up a work area, etc.. There's a little back and forth try-fitting and inspection you can do once you get the hole opened up, before you start shutting stuff off. If you inspect what's there and think it through, you will see you can do a lot of your soldering work away from the tub - once you have your lengths, everything dry fitted, and oriented properly.

The tub spigot and shower head assembly screw in, the lower one to a male threaded copper fitting and the upper chrome pipe into a female, typically. You'll need some teflon tape for those. If you pull back that little round cover, you can probably even see the copper threaded fitting on your shower head pipe. You should be able to grab your tub spigot and unscrew it as you would a nut off a bolt. It might be frozen.

I guess we're assuming you haven't soldered before? I'd get a manual, maybe even from Home Despot, or the library (anyone remember libraries?), so you could sorta get your hand held the first time though. You're getting good advice here from others, so far. After measuring, you have to cut, dry fit (so you know it will fit after soldering), clean, flux, and hot glue those babies into place. It's not hard, and kinda satisfying in the same way welding is - you're wielding fire and bending it to your will [img]/forums/images/icons/cool.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/cool.gif[/img].

In addition to the sheetrock assault weapons, you need a pipe cutter, a pipe cleaner, flux, solder, and a decent torch. Even though they are $35 or so, I'd go for one of the quick start jobs. I resisted it for years (just like I resisted a cordless drill), but I wouldn't be without one now. They run better and are safer, because you will be tempted to set your cheap twist-knob torch down and leave it running instead of burning ten thousand matches relighting it, and you will knock it over. [img]/forums/images/icons/shocked.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]

You need to cruise the fitting aisle at HD and see what they have - you're probably working with 1/2" pipe and will mostly use straight fittings. I think you'll find, regardless of the type of valve body, you have hot & cold coming into the bottom and two pipes running up & down to the shower head and spigot. You should be able to re-use most of the pipe. You may get lucky and find threaded unions on the feed side. If not, you really want to solder some in when you do the work. What I did on my first one was line everything up and solder the feeds in place - it was hard to do it accurately. The next one I did was coupled all around with four unions. If you do that, you can simply cut all four old pipes evenly a few inches away from the old valve, pull out the old unit, solder four union halves in the wall space on the two feeds and supplies, then go sit down somewhere at a comfortable bench, make up four pipe stubs (properly measured), solder the other halves of the unions on to them, and then into the valve body, and screw the unit in. Assuming the existing pipes are spaced apart properly & line up with the new valve sockets. You need them to line up so the couplings will screw togther. That would be one of the first things to check.

You'll also want to anchor the body to something. I put a piece of 2x6 on edge between two studs, located to keep the body in the right position. I fit it carefully, but not wedge tight, and screwed it in with long bugle head screws so I could get it out someday, since the valve is on the back side (between the backer and shower wall) as you look into the access hole. When everything was right, I attached the body to the 2x6 by screwing copper pipe clamps over the stubs.

Soldering is fun, and almost too simple. I was scared when I did my first job, as it was near my oil boiler (mixing valve).

The heat is at the end of the flame, not halfway in the middle of it, so keep the flame back a bit as opposed to flooding the thing with flame. You heat the pipe & fitting, putting most of the flame on the fitting (because it has the double thickness of pipe & fitting), and touch the solder to the joint. I was taught to put the solder on the opposite side of the flame, as the solder is drawn toward the heat. You don't need much, and you will see it run around as a silver thread at the joint, and fill up the joint. Once it goes around, it is also down in the joint. Pull back the flame a bit when the solder melts, watch it run all the way around, and don't touch it while it cools. When you make up your stubs you can look inside and get used to seeing how you get clean flow and circumferential seal with relatively little solder. Any more just lumps into the pipe, producing an impediment to flow. In fact, 1/2" fittings are so cheap you could cut a few 4" stubs and solder a few cheap ones (I think straights are cheapest) one to practice before you turn your flame on that lovely brass valve body, or even the couplers.

You need to keep the pipe dry and clean, and vented - if you don't vent, or there's a little water in the pipe close by, you'll build up pressure and get pinholes from either plain air or steam. Open the valves before you strip the rubber/plastic/teflon guts, and plan your work so you'll have maximum venting. In fact, now that I think of it, that's another good reason to use four unions.

[Phred]

Mosey,

You can do it and I bet you will have a great since of accomplishment in the end.

A couple of tips;
1) do you have a spare shower in case this one takes longer than expected? If not start on a friday night not sunday.
2) Since the back of the shower is in the closet cut an access whole if one does not already exist. You can make a cover out of plywood and modling or buy a plastic cover.
3) Check the instructions. On some of these valves you need to be very carefull about sweating fitting to them. They are often 1/2 NPT threaded and so you don't sweat directly to the vavle. In fact you may be able to unscrew the existing vavle and screw in the new. Unlikely but check it out first.
4) Definately try the copper sweating out in the shop first. The key is that the solder sticks to copper but not copper oxide. The cleaning and flux remove the oxide prior to solder melting and forming the bond. The copper should shine and you should be willing to eat off it (prior to the flux applicatioin!!!). I like the wire brushes better than emory cloth since the cloth leaves a lot of residue.
5) Carefull with that torch. You can set things on fire in a hurry.
6) Pressure test the final product with compressed air prior to water. I plumbed up my whole house with copper and pressure tested it prior to use with an air compressor. It very easy just get a pressure gauge, schreider valve, and two valaves. I put the schreider vavle into a 1/2 NPT ball valve and then a 1/2 NPT T. The pressure gauge goes in one end of the T and the two ball valves go opposite each other in the other arms of the T. Now you connect the open vavle end to the water system. This is a neat setup since you can use a air compressor to add air through the schreider valve and monitor any leak down with the pressure gauge. If it will hold 100 psi for 12 hours you know that you have no leaks. Be careful and make sure that the tub faucet and anything else on the water line can handle the 100 psi!!!! If not then use what ever lower pressure the whole system can stand.
I will try to get a picture of the setup I made.

Hope this helps.

If you can show us a picture maybe we can walk you through it.

Fred