4/5 My Shower Handle Project

There are very few RVs that are well made.  Mostly, they use very thin and lightweight materials, and components tend to break a lot.  I have never liked my shower handles because they started out clear, but ended up constantly getting cloudy from hard water.  

In addition, over the last year or so, I have noticed that you had to turn my hot water shower handle about three revolutions to get hot water.  The cold water handle was OK, but in trying to replace them, I discovered that both had been installed using wood screws instead of the metal screws that came with the unit.  I am guessing that the person who installed them had dropped the real screws and just picked up some extra screws he or she found on the factory floor!  

I have been twice to hardware stores to get longer and slightly wider screws, but nothing really fit, and this is what I have been living with.  Notice that the handles do not match and the problem faucet on the left has a temporary too-long screw that works but looks awful.  

The white hose, by the way, is attached to my hand-held Oxygenics shower wand.  There is no real shower head in this and most other RVs.  The shower wand has an on-off control that lets you control the amount of water you use and turn the water completely off while you soap up.  It also adds air to the water coming through, making it feel like a stronger flow, but still using very little water.  Basically, it enables me to take a good shower with less than 10 gallons of water! 

I had had a small leak a few months ago and knew that the access panel for the shower handle fixture was on the wall behind the stove. 

 

I unscrewed three of the four screws, but the fourth one was too hard because I needed a shorter screwdriver because you had to reach behind the stove vent fixture.  So I just slid the panel to the right and taped it out of my way.   

You can see, first, that they did not bother smoothing the edges of the cheap "wood-like" panel board.  Second, what you cannot see is that the piece of thin plywood they used to reinforce the attachment to the thin shower wall is loose.  In other words, if you unscrew the hot and cold water hoses and remove the handle controls, the piece of plywood will drop down into this narrow space, and you will never get it back again!  

Third, the electrical wire to the thermostat is that black hose thing, and it was in the way, so I taped it out of the way, also.   

The first thing I did was to put some black duct tape on the top of the plywood piece and make sure it was tightly attached to the wall. 

Fourth, I was afraid that the water supply hoses might also drop into this narrow area and end up on the floor, so in spite of this not being an "official plumbing procedure," I grabbed some ties and fastened them to the supply hoses.  Then I found some rope and tied each connection to a length.  

OK, I know this looks silly, but then again, it would really look ridiculous to have to cut another access panel on the floor and try to retrieve the hoses if they fell down.  Note that I tied the rope to the cupboard handle around the corner.  Might not be fancy, but I should get at least a B+ for creativity and planning for contingencies!!  

So, the next step was to unscrew the water supply hoses from both inlets, then unscrew the original white nut. Pull handle unit off inside shower and replace with new unit. See training diagram below:  

Then you just have to do everything in reverse.  Put on new nuts and attach water lines, making sure they don't leak.    Ha!!!

Except this last step took me an hour. The problem was that once you attached the nuts, there was very little room to get your fingers in to attach the water supply hose connections.  (I suspect that the original installers put the fixture on before they put the shower into the motorhome.)  I had a terrible time trying to get them on straight, so ended up loosening the nuts and pushing the flexible shower wall away from me, giving me just enough room to get the connections on straight and tightening them without stripping the threads.  

Then, of course, I had to re-tighten the new black nuts holding the fixture to the wall.  This meant several trips back and forth to the shower to make sure the backing plate stayed in position. 

Voila!!!  Note that I correctly put the unit on with the shower hose coming out of the bottom, per the design, and, most importantly, put the red hot water handle on the left and the blue cold water handle on the right.  (Had to look at the instructions several times and even verify that red was hot and blue was cold by checking the internet. It says that cold is on the right because most people are right-handed.)  

I have tried the shower out, and the nice thing is that when the shower is off, the handles are up.  When it is on, both handles are down.  So, you turn each handle down to turn the water on.  Hot is turned on counterclockwise and cold is turned on clockwise.   

My finished shower!