Installing New Shower Including Rough In For Control Valve

[greghamilton]

I am planning on installing a new shower in our cabin bathroom. It is a very cheap kind of shower, but it will do for a cabin. It is a Durastall Model 68 shower and looks like it is a Phoenix Faucets control valve. I have listed the links below. The installation video for installing the shower just says "install shower control valve and shower head" and does not elaborate.

Even if I do my 4" center rough in copper lines inside the wall and drill my holes for the shower control valve shown in the 3rd link below, how do I connect the threaded fittings on the back of the control valve to the roughed in plumbing inside the wall? Without an access panel on the inside of the shower or on the outside of the bathroom wall, I just for the life of me cannot visualize how to connect the control valve to the roughed in plumbing. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[hj]

You MUST have access to the piping inside the wall.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[greghamilton]

Thanks. That is what it looked like to me also. This is a very cheap set and I may want to stay away from it for that reason. Even though this is just for a cabin, that does not mean I want to have leaks and have to redo everything again. I am using pex throughout the cabin. What if I bought some copper stub outs with pex hose barb on one end and then just used fittings to convert from the copper stub out to whatever I needed to interface with the control valve I picked out? Might look kind of weird with all of that on the inside of the shower, but I could caulk the holes around the stub outs, so I don't think it would leak and I would not have to mess with an access panel.

 

[Houptee]

That valve looks really cheap like a sideways laundry sink faucet. I would get a real shower valve set that has scald guard and pressure balance and just run pex directly to the valve with pex adapter fittings while away from the wall and get a pex drop ear elbow for the shower arm to thread into but mount it on a precut horizontal block so when you push it back to the wall you just attach the block between the studs above the height of the unit wall. Basically pre-pipe it all in pex then test for leaks and push it back to the wall as the slack in the pex slips down into the holes you drilled in the floor.

 

[greghamilton]

That makes sense. I might give that a try. I guess I left out that my water supply is from a 275 gallon IBC tote driven by an on-demand RV pump, so I'm not really sure how a respectable fixture would work with such low water pressure. I did a little research on this control valve and it is from Phoenix Faucets, who focus on fixtures for manufactured homes and RV's. Should work okay for a cabin hopefully. We'll see.