Leak in Shower - Plumber's Visit

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rubyburns

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Need your opinion on this situation:

We have a stall shower that was redone about 5 years ago by Bath Fitters which, of course, means the shower is covered in the one-piece (almost) acrylic unit. At the time of installation, they put in a Moen one-handle pull type faucet. Fine - its been working for these 5 years.

Got a drip recently. We have Moen in both bathroom faucets so I knew the cartridge needed replacing. Since the shower's "stuff" is mostly inside the wall, I didn't want to mess with this myself so we called a plumber.

He came out yesterday. Unscrewed the handle but had a hell of a time getting out the 2nd piece of the system - whatever that was. He kept on prying it with his plyers or screwdriver (whatever) until it finally came out. He also mentioned there was an extra piece that was acting as an extender.

He replaced the cartridge (which I already had because Moen sends these out free under their warranty) and even got the hot/cold sides correctly. BUT when he went back out to turn the water on, the shower head started spewing water.

After he came back in, he/we found that if you turned the handle a quarter of the way to either the hot OR cold side, the water would not drip. But, if you turned it all the way to either cold or hot or if it was straight down, the water would drip out rather alot.

What the hell? I was not in a good mood at this point. He said there wasn't anything else he could do other than replace the whole shebang which would mean ripping out the mirror in the other bathroom (access) or else it would mean contacting Bath Fitters and having them do whatever they could - ripping out the whole wall around the faucet to gain access.

The problem is that since its been 5 years, the faucets have changed and the parts do not match exactly so there is no such thing as just replacing the piece behind the handle which is where the plumber says the problem probably is.

In my opinion, since he had to pry so hard getting that piece out - it probably damaged it. I think if you press down real hard on the handle when it is pointing towards the dripping angles, the dripping will stop.

Obviously, since there is an angle at which there isn't any dripping, replacing the cartridge DID WORK. But - something else got messed up because it wasn't that way before!

Okay...that was alot to type. What do you all think? Is this just the "way it goes" with plumbing? I guess I could just let it go for now since the handle can at least be turned a way so that it doesn't drip. But, it is not "right".

It is really our fault, I guess, for not getting the model number of the faucet from Bath Fitters when they installed the whole thing 5 years ago. They didn't give us the information from the Moen faucet like they should have and we didn't think to ask for it. So stupid in hindsight. We have called Bath Fitters - they told us what model they used and I looked it up on the Moen website but that model looks nothing like the faucet we have so they obviously are nuts.

Thanks for any advice/opinion, etc.

Ruby & Tom
 
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