I've got some problems with my shower control unit. The valve for turning the shower on and off seems to be very loose and the temperature control seems to be very tight. What I'm going to do is go through the process of refurbing this. Welcome to Dim Tips, the channel that repairs, revives and restores.
Please do not forget to subscribe for videos just like this. The first step that... I had to do was actually just remove the coverings.
Inside each side the temperature control unit part as well as the actual valve for turning it on off is actually a phillips screw that's a star-shaped one. So the first step for me was to actually go ahead and remove the screw which was actually holding it in place. The one for the temperature control was actually a little bit longer than the one for the valve for turning it on and off.
So it took me a little while. Sorry for the shaky video, but I couldn't actually get my stand together. Here's me just taking off the valve screw on the other side. Similarly, it had a covering that was just pipped out with a screw. and here's the actual valve you can see it's just a brass valve there.
The next step is to turn the temperature first of all right up and then all the way down so that it's in the cold position from the temperature side. It just helps in the future. I think that there is a slight pole which actually controls the temperature. So it has quite a spring against it.
Next is just taking off the actual mechanism which actually controls the temperature from going above 38 degrees. There's actually an Allen key that actually was needed to loosen the actual unit. Be very careful because you're going to see a mistake that I made.
I didn't take and drain out the... Water and it went everywhere and then here's one I prepared earlier. I just put it back in so you could actually see it But do be careful I should have probably have released it from that top unit there and took a lot of the water out now I did try with my adjustable spanner, but it wasn't long enough. So thankfully I had effectively a torque wrench and It was a lot easier to actually loosen this I've been told of individuals who've actually had issues with actually loosening this.
As I went about to loosen it, it started draining some of the water on the other side so you can just see it dripping. Thankfully I was in the shower so it wasn't too much of an issue. Once I had taken the majority of the load off, it's easy enough to do by hand and I just used the socket set that I actually had to just effectively loosen it and then it was fairly easy.
found was that as I'm trying to take it out it was quite tight. There's effectively a rubber seal which is probably the valve actually that gets stuck there and as I pulled it out and you'll see it in just a second is that the the valve actually got stuck in there which caused me a little bit of an issue and meant I had to fish it out. I used just the smaller violin key and it was easy enough to fish out.
and it's also easy enough to actually pop back on. You'll see the compression joint, so you'll be able to work out where it actually lies. Next step for me was actually just putting a bit of vinegar on there to remove as much lime scale as possible. I think some of this was because of hard water, and it did help by putting... this in vinegar one thing that i did do i think i left it for too long it discolored it slightly it went a bit of a rosy tinge so i would probably recommend don't keep it in there for too long but you can see that it's really really clean i put the rubber gland piece back on and then just screwed it back in.
You have to be a bit careful on the temperature control valve piece ensure that that allen key nub or nib that actually it corresponds to the bottom side otherwise it's going to be very difficult. I could see that it was protruding a little bit so the tap took care of it and now I'm just using the allen key to tighten up and secure the temperature control valve element. Next I'm just hand tightening the on off valve and adjusting the pressure and I used an adjustable wrench because I didn't want to over tighten it. I thought while I had the actual knobs and coverings open I'd clean them.
I used vinegar for this and they seem to come off a tree there's me just using an old toothbrush to clean the inside and the outside i could have used biocowl or some other product temperature control valve there's a there's a few notches so i had to make sure that they were aligned there's a there's a slight notch just there as you can see and then there's a corresponding notch which goes into the same area and then there's a notch just behind it which corresponds to the line for the temperature control marker so what i'm going to do is i'm just going to line all three of those up so that i'm absolutely comfortable that it will be at the correct corresponding temperature. Before putting on the last piece which was the actual notch which goes in there, I want to just twist the temperature control to maximum zero. So right would mean that it's getting colder and left would mean it's getting hotter.
So now I know that this should be the highest temperature which is approximately 50 degrees and I want the corresponding line to be there. Now I want the line to show above the shower so I'm just going to push this in and now I can add in the control valve. So it has a little push button which should then correspond to the max.
line in there and I'm just going to squeeze it as I'm pushing it on and then that should perfectly take me to the 50 line. Now let's just test it by twisting it to approximately 38 degrees and then we should hear a little click. Ah perfect! A little bit off so probably needed a bit of adjustment. I'll do that in just a sec but generally happy because now I should be able to click it on.
Then it meets the temperature line that I expect it to be at. Okay it lines up perfectly so I'm happy with that and now I just need to attach the screw to this side and pretty much the same on the other side. So all screwed in, capped off, very happy with this, gave it a little clean and everything seems to be working fine.
I'm happy with the results. Please don't forget to subscribe and check out one of my other videos. Thanks a lot for watching.