Tub Faucet Fix

LESLIE: Stan in Mississippi is on the line with a tub faucet problem. What’s going on? STAN: I have two bathrooms and both of them do it. Every time I turn the faucet on, water comes out of the showerhead.…

LESLIE: Stan in Mississippi is on the line with a tub faucet problem. What’s going on?

STAN: I have two bathrooms and both of them do it. Every time I turn the faucet on, water comes out of the showerhead. It’s not full power but it reaches about halfway across the bathtub. My wife’s sitting there trying to run the bath water, trying to take a bath. She’s got cold water hitting on top of the head and I don’t know how to fix it.

TOM: So, the problem is the diverter valve, which is built into the tub faucet. It’s not fully closed. So, it might just be a bad valve or maybe it’s stuck. But to fix that, you’re probably going to have to replace that part of the tub faucet or maybe the entire faucet.

STAN: Is that the thing – the little thing – you flip to make it come out of the shower?

TOM: Yes, correct. Exactly. That’s the diverter.

STAN: OK. And I know when it’s about halfway stuck, it makes a squealing sound, like a kinked water hose.

TOM: Yep.

STAN: I’ve had that before but it doesn’t do that at all. The water has no trouble coming out of the faucet.

TOM: When you turn on the shower by closing that diverter – basically shifting the valve so that it doesn’t come out the tub spout, it comes out the showerhead – for some reason, when it goes back, it’s not fully opening again. So you’re getting this wash of water, basically, out of two taps: one on the showerhead and out of the hose – one out of the tub faucet itself.

So the tub faucet problem is in that diverter valve and it just might be that you’ve got a bad fixture there and might need to replace that faucet – that tub faucet. But that’ll do it; that’ll straighten it out. OK?

STAN: Alright. And if not that, do they make a coupling to go on my showerhead with a – on the cutoff valve?

TOM: You shouldn’t have to do that, Stan. That’s really an extraordinary step to take for something that’s fairly straightforward like a tub faucet problem.

STAN: OK.

TOM: I mean I think you just have a bad faucet there. And go pick up a new one from American Standard. They have these ceramic-disc valves now built into them that just never leak.

STAN: Alright. Well, I sure appreciate it.