Johnny-Canuck
Member
My mom's house was built close to 60 years ago and the bathtub taps have a small but annoying drip that she wants to have fixed. It should be just a simple case of removing the valve stem and installing a new washer (based on the vintage of the original installation). My problem is that when the house was built they didn't provide an access panel arrangement to be able to access the piping and valve body stuff that's behind the tiled bathroom wall.
The pictures I'm attaching give you a view of what I mean. Are there any tips/tricks that would let me get the valve stem out relatively "safely"? What I mean by "safely" is that there is a nut that I think I need to remove, before I can get the valve stem out, but what I'm concerned about is that if I need to put quite a bit of pressure on the wrench to remove this nut, I'm afraid that whatever it's attached to behind the wall (and that I don't have access to) might break.
Here are 3 pictures. This first one shows the tap from the side. I was able to easily unscrew what I think is called the packing nut. With the packing nut off, when I turn the tap handle I believe I should be able to just continue to turn the handle and unscrew the valve stem right out of the valve body. However, my problem is that I can't unscrew the valve stem completely the way I was hoping, because it appears to me that it's stopping when it reaches the nut that's visible ... and so that's why I suspect I also need to remove this nut.
Another view of the nut.
And a very limited view of what I can see behind the wall and that I'm afraid of damaging.
I'd appreciate any thoughts anyone has. Thanks.
The pictures I'm attaching give you a view of what I mean. Are there any tips/tricks that would let me get the valve stem out relatively "safely"? What I mean by "safely" is that there is a nut that I think I need to remove, before I can get the valve stem out, but what I'm concerned about is that if I need to put quite a bit of pressure on the wrench to remove this nut, I'm afraid that whatever it's attached to behind the wall (and that I don't have access to) might break.
Here are 3 pictures. This first one shows the tap from the side. I was able to easily unscrew what I think is called the packing nut. With the packing nut off, when I turn the tap handle I believe I should be able to just continue to turn the handle and unscrew the valve stem right out of the valve body. However, my problem is that I can't unscrew the valve stem completely the way I was hoping, because it appears to me that it's stopping when it reaches the nut that's visible ... and so that's why I suspect I also need to remove this nut.
Another view of the nut.
And a very limited view of what I can see behind the wall and that I'm afraid of damaging.
I'd appreciate any thoughts anyone has. Thanks.