A shower is a wonderful experience for most of us, water at your preferred temperature coursing down your back is a brilliant feeling, picking up a lovely smelling soap to wash all of yesterday’s dirt off of you and let it run down the drain. A shower can be a person’s happy place.
Until something isn’t working properly on the shower, specifically speaking, the shower handle. It can leak and affect the pressure of the water coming out, turning your power shower into a more relaxed waterfall. This is an irritation issue for most shower users.
Your next question may be “How do I fix this?” “Do I need to buy a brand new shower?” Let me stop you right there before you get ahead of yourself, you don’t need to go off and buy yourself an entirely new shower, so scratch that off of your to do list.
You will just need to replace the handle. Don’t worry if you’re not a DIY expert, this is quite a simple task, just follow these steps:
Replacing Shower Handle
- Turn off the supply of water.
- Unscrew the screws that are holding it in place.
- Remove the handle in question from the valve it was attached to.
- If you find that the handle has corroded you simply need to add some plumbers lubricant.
- You then need to wrap the faucet stem with some tape.
- Screw the handle back in place
- And then finally replace the trim plate
Following these steps will ensure that you can remove the handle of the shower and it’s not a very time consuming task so you can get back to showering as soon as possible.
Is It Possible To Just Replace The Handle?
Sometimes you’ll find that it is not always necessary to replace the valve and you can fix the problem just by replacing the shower handle. Due to the nature of what a shower handle is used for it’s completely normal for the handle to take some damage on the way.
We know everyone is in a rush sometimes and that can cause some freakish levels of strength which may affect the handles “workingness” or maybe you just think that the shower handle you already have isn’t very nice and you want to upgrade to something that is more aesthetically pleasing.
It doesn’t matter what type of shower handle you have, removing them is almost always universally the same.
However, if you’re only going to remove the handle you should make sure that the handle you want to replace fits the valve you already have, so if you have a single handle, then replace it with another single handle.
Before you begin this process it’s a good idea to get something to cover the drain just so no screws go missing.
Removing Just the Handle
The first thing you need to do to remove the shower handle is to turn off the water supply, this can normally be found on the back or the side of the shower unit but if you can’t find that then it may be in the wall, if that’s the case don’t panic you’ll just need to shut off the water supply to your whole house.
Once you have done that to remove any excess water pressure turn the valve to the position it needs to be in for the shower to start.
Next you want to find the screws for the shower handle, these can be located underneath the handle normally and simply unscrew them. Once this has been completed you can remove the handle from the valve.
Sometimes if you haven’t replaced the shower handle in years you may find that it is corroded and difficult to remove, simply add plumbers lubricant to the handle and go from there. Once this has been achieved you will need to pull the trim plate off, this covers the hole in the wall that leads to the body of the valve.
Now it is time to install a new handle of your choosing. For this you’ll want to wrap some tape around the stem of the faucet and place the new handle onto the stem and screw into place using the screws that will come with the new handle.
After the handle is secure place the trim plate over the new handle screw it into place if it needs it, you may be to just snap it into place.
Once this has been done you simply need to turn on the water supply that you previously turned off and clean up any mess you may have made while replacing the shower hand and you can then start to enjoy your new handle.
See nothing to worry about there, a very simple DIY task to get you started.
In Summary
Removing a shower handle is a very simple task that almost anyone can do. Okay anyone can do it. By following the steps above you will be able to replace your old handle with a fresh brand new one.
By doing this you will have fixed any problems that your old handle was running into, like leaking for example. Like stated above it can be a nerve racking experience watching a shower handle begin to leak, you may initially think that you need to change the whole shower set.
I promise that isn’t the case whatsoever, you simply need to replace the damaged parts. You may find that over the years of the shower handle being used that it has corroded a little bit and is difficult at first to remove, if this is the problem then you can simply add some plumbers lubricant to loosen up the shower handle and start to pull it off.
It’s important to remember that you should replace the handle with the same valve style, so if it’s a single shower handle make sure you purchase exactly that, a single shower handle, otherwise the one you purchase will not fit.
