Replacing one pressure balance valve means replacing all of them?

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ksuzy

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I am not a plumber but I have a very basic question which I haven't been able to find on the internet. I recently renovated my master bath and installed a new pressure balance valve in the shower. Ever since then, the shower has been lukewarm (never had issues before). I checked the temperature and it is at 95 degrees. We have 2 other showers which are at 120 degrees.

I raised the temperature on the water heater, so now the new shower is at 110 degrees. The other two showers are now at 135 degrees. I'm still not thrilled with this temperature but I don't want to raise the temperature on my water heater any higher because if I do, the other two showers will get dangerously hot.

So now i have one shower that is warm, and 2 showers that are really hot.

I suspect that the other two showers have older valves (home was built in 1990) which are not up to current code. So I guess my only option now is to replace the shower valves in the other two showers in order to get them all in sync?

I wish i knew when i was renovating my master bath that replacing the shower valve in that shower meant I'd have to replace ALL of the shower valves in my house in order to get them all in sync with the water heater. I probably would have just kept the old shower valve and left my water heater on a lower temperature.

So does this mean when you replace one shower valve you have to do all of the bathrooms? Is this typical?
 

hj

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The other valves have NOTHING to do with your problem with this one. You either have a defective pressure balancing spool, or have the maximum temperature stop set too low.
 

ksuzy

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The other valves have NOTHING to do with your problem with this one. You either have a defective pressure balancing spool, or have the maximum temperature stop set too low.

Well that was what i originally thought, but the temperature limit ring is at the highest setting. I even took it off to see if that would help, but it didn't really help. I went back and forth with the manufacturer on this as I was convinced it was an issue with the new valve, so they sent me a new one, but that didn't help. I then realized that my water heater was on the lowest setting (A) - which was just fine for my old shower valves but not for the new one apparently.

So I raised the water heater to the B setting and the new shower works fine now, but i'm just frustrated that my other two older showers are now too hot.
 
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