plumbing for wall mounted shower

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Daniel E

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Hi. I have a couple of questions for you all. I am not a professional plumber so sorry if I sound dumb! I am working on plumbing for a wall mounted shower fixture that I bought and of course it comes with no instructions, no plumbing template or anything..

I've looked up youtube videos about this but every other one seems to have a mount that attaches to the wall over the plumbing pipes. This one that I have just threads into the plumbing with nothing attaching it to the wall at the valve.

So my thought is that I just have to measure very precisely so that when I screw this on, it is snug up against the shower tile. I plan on using a cpvc stubout with a 1/2" FNPT push fitting on the end to screw the shower valve into. Will this work?

Hopefully my pictures can help explain what I'm talking about.
The first picture is the piece that came with the shower that attaches the handle to the plumbing in the wall.
The second picture shows the tiny hole inside that piece. Is that normal? I know there are flow restrictors but usually I thought it was a gasket that you could take out.
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Jadnashua

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That valve essentially hangs on the fittings. I would not use CPVC for this! YOu need your dog-eared ell screwed to blocking in the wall down tight, then you insert the fittings. If you need some depth, you may need to use a brass nipple and a coupling to have a male fitting for the one that came with the valve. The fitting into the valve is likely metric, and the other end may be inch-based, and might not be a tapered fitting (more like a hose with straight threads), so getting the right combination of fittings and the installed length just right can be tricky. They have that offset in them so that you can both level and get the spacing exactly right to then screw down the valve assembly where it needs to go.

The shower head is flow restricted to a max of 2.5gpm, so that the restriction in the fitting is mostly irrelevant. With the offset, making it bigger would be a much more expensive adapter with little if any gain.
 

Daniel E

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Thanks for the reply. One thing I didn't mention was that the original plumbing had hammer arresters installed by the old valve. I'm not sure if I need them or not but I figured I should leave some there just to be safe. So I was planning on doing it like in the picture below. Would this be ok with copper pipe if I attach the T-fitting tight to blocking in the wall?
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Jadnashua

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Sharkbite (or similar) fittings are probably not your best bet for this type of installation since, while they won't easily pull apart, they can rotate on the pipe. You'd really be better off soldering things together, then screw in the required bit to attach the valve.

Some valves call for hammer arrestors, but it doesn't hurt to have one there even if not needed. It all depends on how the internals work...some can turn off very quickly, and they can really help.
 

Daniel E

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Sharkbite (or similar) fittings are probably not your best bet for this type of installation since, while they won't easily pull apart, they can rotate on the pipe. You'd really be better off soldering things together, then screw in the required bit to attach the valve.

Some valves call for hammer arrestors, but it doesn't hurt to have one there even if not needed. It all depends on how the internals work...some can turn off very quickly, and they can really help.

Ok this is very helpful, thank you for the advice. I have one more question for you:

Do I really need to use that offset fitting? It seems like it would just be easier to measure everything and use a straight brass nipple into the valve.
 

Dj2

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Ok this is very helpful, thank you for the advice. I have one more question for you:

Do I really need to use that offset fitting? It seems like it would just be easier to measure everything and use a straight brass nipple into the valve.

You're right about that.
 

Jadnashua

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You can check, but I think they are two different threads, and if you can get the two fittings in the wall exactly level and exactly the right distance apart, you're a better man than I! It doesn't take much at all to prevent the shower valve's nuts from starting without cross-threading...thus, the reason why they include the offset fittings (and, as said, they're probably different threads to go from US to Metric).
 
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