Brian80
New Member
I redid one of the bathrooms in my house over the summer (totally gutted, moved all fixtures, added a shower), and the shower now shoots out a bit of dirty water after it's been off for several hours. It's only for a second or two, then it clears up. I noticed it a while ago but ignored it thinking it was just a bit of debris in the new lines that would clear up by itself. Well, it's been about 2 months and it's not going away so I'm going to have to do something about it.
First of all, here's a video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rl51Pj-FGuxKtN2QC6GRr4_f5-TnjK9v/view?usp=sharing
None of the usual reasons for dirty water apply in my situation:
- There are no galvanized pipes anywhere in the house. It was originally plumbed with polybutylene, has a few copper lines far away from this bathroom, and the new bathroom uses PEX.
- We replaced the water heater with a tankless 2 years ago, so that's not a source of dirty water.
- The rest of the house is fine.
- The dirty water is only coming from the shower. The toilet and sink in the same bathroom are fine.
- The cold water line feeds the shower first, then the toilet, then the sink. If the problem was with the cold water coming in to the bathroom, it would affect the toilet and sink too.
- Before this renovation, the old bathroom did not have this issue.
It looks like rust, doesn't it? The shower valve is new and no part of it should be able to rust anyway. The only other potential source of rust is the wall union that you connect the shower hose to. The supply lines are all plastic and all the fittings are all brass going back to the city main water line.
I attached a few pictures of work in progress that show the layout of the supply lines. Hot and cold come in from the ceiling and work their way to the fixtures. Out of the hundreds of pictures I took of this reno, I didn't actually take any good ones of the finished supply lines - this is the best I could find.
Thanks for any advice!
First of all, here's a video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rl51Pj-FGuxKtN2QC6GRr4_f5-TnjK9v/view?usp=sharing
None of the usual reasons for dirty water apply in my situation:
- There are no galvanized pipes anywhere in the house. It was originally plumbed with polybutylene, has a few copper lines far away from this bathroom, and the new bathroom uses PEX.
- We replaced the water heater with a tankless 2 years ago, so that's not a source of dirty water.
- The rest of the house is fine.
- The dirty water is only coming from the shower. The toilet and sink in the same bathroom are fine.
- The cold water line feeds the shower first, then the toilet, then the sink. If the problem was with the cold water coming in to the bathroom, it would affect the toilet and sink too.
- Before this renovation, the old bathroom did not have this issue.
It looks like rust, doesn't it? The shower valve is new and no part of it should be able to rust anyway. The only other potential source of rust is the wall union that you connect the shower hose to. The supply lines are all plastic and all the fittings are all brass going back to the city main water line.
I attached a few pictures of work in progress that show the layout of the supply lines. Hot and cold come in from the ceiling and work their way to the fixtures. Out of the hundreds of pictures I took of this reno, I didn't actually take any good ones of the finished supply lines - this is the best I could find.
Thanks for any advice!
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. No wonder I was getting orange water. This is what it looked like after only 2 months. Good riddance!
