Need help with fixed shower head.

What a strange type of fixing, to rely on the elbow for holding up the shower head.

Any plumbers come across this before? (I guess not - as no-one has said.)

Ross, any idea of the make?

It looks, from the photos, that the elbow is almost flush with the front of the tile, and I doubt it's meant to be sticking out any further than this. Ross, how much of the threaded portion of the shower actually screws in to the elbow (without the plate)? (Remove all the PTFE first so's it screws in easily - you're gonna have to re-PTFE it anyway later on to make it water tight, once you've first found out how to tighten the whole thing.)

I would imagine that pretty much all of the threaded part should screw in, and that would leave the shower's 'arm' pretty much touching the tiles.

If it doesn't screw in pretty the whole amount, there's something amiss.

Then there's the issue of being able to tighten it up full with the plate in place, and the shower head facing downwards! There must surely be something there to take up a small amount of the 'play' that would be required?

That plate, for instance - does that rubber gasket stick out proud from the back, so that it gets squished against the tile and allows that extra bit of tightening if needed?


Anyways, Ross - find out the make of the shower, and we'll be able to find the installation instructions for it.

Anything else is speculation, and that takes lots of writing. We hate writing on here...

 

Is that 'elbow' really just a plumbing elbow? Surely not.

Won't it be more like a 'back plate elbow fixing' like you get on, say, outdoor taps? Ie - it should be firmly fixed - screwed - to the substrate behind it, block or whatever it is.

In which case, if you can't get access from behind it, your choices would appear to be (a) remove a couple of tiles and reattach it properly before retiling, (b) Straighten it up (screw in something to keep it completely horizontal) and then inject something like resin in to fill the surrounding space and hold it firm permanently, or (c) cut away just enough of the tiles to allow access to reattach the 'elbow', and then source a decorative cover (eg a chrome-finish plate) to hide the mess before fitting the shower arm and its back-plate back on. (You could, I guess, even use an additional tile of the same type as this decorative cover, one that has had a suitable hole cut out in the middle for the job. Provided the tile thickness does mess things up.)

 

Ok, two possibilities about the 'loose' elbow; one is that it's 'ok' for it to be a bit loose but when you tighten the shower arm the elbow gets pulled tight and is fine. The other is that the elbow has a mounting plate that is meant to be fixed firm.

I'd have thought that the second option is far more likely. Surely it's something like this: http://www.screwfix.com/p/wall-plate-elbow-15mm-x/92934

Can you look around the wee gap to see?

The other weird thing is why the arm doesn't screw in further. Are you sure it hasn't just hit a 'sticky' point? How does the depth of the elbow insides compare with the threaded portion of the arm? When you look in to that elbow, does the threaded bit end with a narrower 'seat/flange' that would make the arm stop dead? Or does the threaded bit chust come to an end and there's a space behind it?

 

Yeah from the looks of it it's a backplate elbow...that's pretty standard for fixing... If you can wobble that elbow then you've gotta take the tile off to sort out why it's wobbling...if the arm thread is too long for the internal thread of the elbow either put more tape on- (normally do 20wraps- but maybe 30 in this case) or cut the thread on the arm down

 

Ah, shame.

Hopefully your tiler will be able to replace the two tiles afterwards without any matching issues.

There are other ways around this - post #23 - but what you are planning is obviously the 'best' way.

Good luck.

 

Glad your getting to the bottom of it!