Shower & Tub Valve Repair in San Jose, CA
A shower head that drips for a minute or two after you turn the water off is not faulty. That is the arm draining, and it is entirely normal. What is not normal is a head that drips steadily for hours, because that means the valve cartridge behind the wall is no longer shutting the water off properly.
The other common complaint is temperature that wanders. You are fine until somebody runs a tap or flushes a toilet elsewhere in the house, and the shower goes cold or hot. That is usually a worn pressure-balancing spool inside the valve, and it is a repair rather than a replacement in most cases.
Weak or uneven spray is generally the head rather than the valve, and our water is the reason. Mineral scale blocks the small openings. Unscrew it, soak it in white vinegar for a few hours, poke the holes through, rinse and refit with fresh thread tape. That one you can genuinely do yourself, and we would rather you did than paid us to.
What makes shower work different from most fixture repairs is access. The valve lives behind the wall, so how we reach it depends on your bathroom. Sometimes there is a panel behind it in a closet or an adjoining room and the job is straightforward. Sometimes tile has to come off. Tell us what is on the other side of that wall when you call and we can usually tell you which situation you are in before we arrive.
When people call us about this
- Shower head drips continuously long after the water is shut off
- Temperature swings when a tap or toilet is used elsewhere
- Handle turns much further than it used to, or does not shut off fully
- Weak, scattered, or uneven spray
- Diverter no longer sends water to the head properly
Questions we get asked
Do you have to remove tile to fix a shower valve?+
Not always, and it is the first thing we work out. Many bathrooms have an access panel behind the shower wall, often in an adjoining closet or bedroom, and where one exists the valve can be reached without disturbing anything you can see. Where there is no panel, we open from the least damaging side available, which is sometimes the back wall in another room rather than the tile itself. Tell us what is directly behind the shower when you call and we can usually give you a realistic answer before we arrive rather than after.
Why does the temperature change when someone flushes a toilet?+
Because the toilet refilling draws cold water away from the shower, and the mixing valve is not compensating the way it should. Modern shower valves include a pressure-balancing spool designed to hold the ratio steady when supply on one side dips. When that spool wears or sticks, the compensation stops working and you feel every draw on the system. Replacing the cartridge usually restores it. If the same thing is happening across every fixture in the house rather than just the shower, the underlying issue may be system pressure instead, and a gauge on a hose bib will tell us.
Can I just replace the shower head myself?+
Yes, and for weak or scattered spray that is usually the whole fix. Unscrew the old one by hand or with a cloth-wrapped wrench, clean the threads on the arm, wrap them with fresh thread tape, and hand-tighten the new one. If the existing head is simply scaled up rather than failed, soaking it in white vinegar for a few hours and clearing the openings often restores it completely and costs nothing. Where you should stop is anything requiring the wall to be opened, or a valve that will not shut off. Those are behind-the-wall repairs with water pressure behind them.
Further reading: The Toilet That Runs at Night, and Three Other Things You Can Fix Yourself and Hard Water in San Jose: What It Does to Your Pipes and Fixtures.
Describe it to us and we will tell you what it is.
Phone consultations do not cost anything. If it turns out to be something you can sort out yourself, we will say so.
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Shower & Tub Valve Repair across the South Bay
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