Yesterday I bit the bullet and decided to fix the bath tub valve. I had figured out that There was going to be no easy way to replace the entire valve assembly because the plumbing was put in long before the bathroom walls were plastered and tiled. I did have access to the valve cartridge.
It is a Moen valve... so all I should have needed to do was buy a new cartridge... use a plastic "tool" that comes with the new cartridge to remove the old, and then insert the new! Yeah.. didn't work that way. The cartridge casing was calcified into the valve casting, and after 6 hours of careful use of a hacksaw blade, blow torch and silicon spray... I manged to removed the old cartridge casing. (That plastic tool was a joke.) It then took about 45 seconds to install the new cartridge.
Anyway its nice having a working bathtub again. The basement shower has been cold! (The water main was only off for 8 hrs.)
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