Shower Repair in Randolph County: Your Shower Working Right Again, Fast

The drip that won't quit after you shut the handle off? That's the Shower Repair call we get most. Next comes weak or crooked spray. Then water that never really gets hot. Or water that jumps from warm to cold while you're rinsing your hair. Slow drains, a puddle around your feet, a sour smell from the drain. Those all point to the same spot.

Damp drywall. A soft place in the floor. A brown stain on the ceiling below the bathroom. Water has been moving around back there for a while. Hard well water out in the country parts of Randolph County is tough on fixtures. Scale fills up a shower head and eats at a valve fast. Here's what I see most weeks. I pull a head off and tap it over the tub. Little white chunks fall out like sand. That's the scale. It builds up quietly for years.

So why does your shower keep dripping after you turn it off? Inside the valve are rubber seals and seats. When they get old, they don't close all the way. Water pressure finds that tiny gap and sneaks through. On most mixing valves, that's just a cartridge or a stem. Not the whole fixture.

- Swapping a cartridge, stem, or seal fixes most drips. - A worn out valve body, or one nobody makes parts for anymore, has to be replaced. - Cracked tile and missing grout usually mean the leak is behind the wall.

Older houses in Asheboro and Randleman often have brass or galvanized supply lines. That changes how we go about the job. We also look at how old the fixture is. We look at whether water has already done damage. And we ask how long you plan to live there. Here's my honest call. If the valve body is pitted and you're staying put, replace it. Patching a valve that's already giving up just buys you a few months.

Every Shower Repair visit starts the same way. We turn the shower on and watch it. We check the valve, the drain, and the walls close by for damp spots. Then we shut the water off, either at the fixture or at the main. We put covers down over your floor and tub.

Parts get matched to your valve brand and trim, so your handle still fits when we're done. We only cut an access panel when the wall truly has to be opened. Once the cover comes off, the o-rings are usually squashed flat against the brass. Hard as a fingernail. They don't look like rings anymore at all.

Before we pack the truck, we test for leaks and check the pressure. We run hot water until the temperature holds steady. Then we clean up and tell you straight what we found. No guessing, no fuzzy talk.

Some shower trouble isn't really a plumbing job. A clogged head often clears up if you soak it in vinegar overnight. That breaks loose the scale our well water leaves behind. A hair clog under the drain cover can usually be pulled out by hand, glove on. I've done that one in under a minute, standing there in my boots.

A wobbly handle may just need the screw tightened under the little cap. Mildew on grout is a cleaning job, not a leak. Takes about two minutes to check.

Call us if the trouble comes back in a few days. Also call if you spot water anywhere outside the shower. That means it's traveling somewhere you can't see.

Mill-era and mid-century houses in Franklinville, Ramseur, and Liberty usually have older two- and three-handle valves. Parts for those are hard to track down. Newer homes in Archdale and Trinity mostly have single-handle pressure-balance valves. Those break in a different way. The balancing spool gums up and sticks before anything else goes bad.

Well water around Seagrove and Staley drops scale in heads and cartridges year after year. Lots of homes here sit on crawl spaces. So a drain leak often shows up under the floor first. You may notice nothing inside the bathroom for months.

Cold snaps in winter are hard on supply lines running through outside walls. When a job needs it, permits and inspections go through the Randolph County building authority.

Swapping a cartridge and replacing a whole valve are two very different Shower Repair jobs. That's the biggest thing that moves the price. Whether we have to open the wall and patch it afterward matters nearly as much. Valve brand counts too. Some parts sit on the shelf. Others have to be ordered and waited on.

A slow leak that's been running for months can rot out the subfloor. We don't know that until we look. Drain work can be as simple as snaking the line. Or it can mean replacing a trap or a chunk of drain pipe.

Getting to the work matters as well. A crawl space or a cramped upstairs bathroom takes longer, plain and simple. I've spent more time crawling to a trap than fixing it. After-hours and emergency calls are priced differently. Preventing moisture damage costs less than repairing it, as HUD's healthy homes guidance points out.

The EPA WaterSense program has homeowner guidance on finding and fixing leaks if you want to read more before calling us.