Not very exciting Right? Well, exciting or not you may find yourself in a situation where you might have to, so I shot this short video to help you out! So I’ll get a call stating their’s water leaking down below their bathroom in line with the bathtub. My first question is usually, does it leak continually or only when you use the tub? Most times it’s the latter which indicates they have a drain pipe issue and isn’t as urgent because if they don’t use it, there is no leak.
If they tell me it leaks continually that indicates to me they have a water pipe leak and I’d better get over there a.s.a.p. What often happens is when I enter the bathroom, I’ll notice that the tub/shower valve is leaking into the bathtub. Now I’m saying to myself this could be a drain pipe leak but until I stop the faucet from leaking I really won’t be able to tell.
I repair the faucet and stop it from leaking, fill up the tub several times and let it drain off. NO LEAK? What’s going on? At this point, I get on my knees and take a peek under the tub nozzle and notice that it’s partially corroded underneath so I turn on the tub/shower valve and observe. What I see is the water streaming along the bottom of the nozzle toward the tile wall. About 10 minutes later I’ll see the leak showing in the ceiling below.
I remove the tub nozzle and notice that there is a huge void around the pipe that exits the wall and discover that the water is simply rolling back along the bottom of the nozzle and right back into the wall. A little silicone caulk or tile grout would have solved this problem, but the fact is in real life I find this situation all the time. The solution! Replace that corroded tub nozzle and thoroughly seal the void between the pipe exiting the wall with a high-quality silicone seal.
Back in the day, most of the pipes that accepted tub nozzles were I.P.S (iron pipe size) or screw type. You simply measured for the proper length nipple to exit the wall and screw on a new tub nozzle. Today we have a few more options and in this video, I’ll go over them and show you how to replace a tub nozzle in your home. So stick around, check out this video and if you have questions, please reach out to me at info@bobsplumbingvideos.com.
Happy Plumbing,
Bob