american standard leaking shower cartridge.

[hotrod]

I have a single handle shower faucet that is leaking. about 12oz a minute I replaced cartridge and still having problem. whats next? Pressure Balancing Unit or new faucet?

[jadnashua]

The cartridge generally contains all of the wear parts of the valve, and replacing it, if it is installed correctly and is the right one, generally fixes the leak and restores normal operations. If you chose an aftermarket cartridge rather than an OEM one, that may be part of the problem as could it maybe being the wrong one. Also, there could be some crud in the lines from turning the water off and dislodging things - generally, it's a good idea to turn the water on with the cartridge out to flush the lines before installing the new one.

If the body of the valve or cartridge is scratched or gouged up, it may never again seal well and would need to be replace in its entirety. It's also possible that an o-ring got dislodge when you inserted the new one. Make sure that it is lubricated with silicon plumber's grease. This will also make it easier to insert. You may have ruined the o-ring(s) if you didn't lubricate them (some come already lubricated, but not all).

[hotrod]

thanks for input. cartridge is OEM. I went to a specialty shop and they ordered it in. The shop owner recomended to not put any grease on o-rings so I did not do that. I didn't give much consideration when I installed it. the 3 screws and cartridge seemed all very precise with no slop. the 0-rings barly protrude out of the cartridge.
I will re-examine my installation procedure and repost on my findings.

[jadnashua]

It is critical, if you do use grease that it be the right type or you'll potentially ruin the rubber in the o-ring(s). FWIW, on some I've dealt with, it was nearly imposible to insert the thing without some grease on it. A pinched, dislocated, or torn o-ring will usually allow it to leak.

[hj]

IF that unit has a separate balancing unit, then I have had situations where it has "separated" where the two sides are joined together causing a leak. Usually when that happens there is white residue along the seam where the crack is. In fact, I usually replace the balancing unit before considering whether the cartridge is defective.

[hotrod]

http://www.americanstandard-us.com/a...Parts_2182.pdf
this link I beleive is my shower. I didn't save the box from 15 to 20 years ago so I am not positive. I am getting ready to re-examine my cartridge install to see if I made an error. thank-you everbody for your input.

[hotrod]

the first balancing unit I got was wrong part. I picked up the correct part on christmas eve. I decided to wait till day after christmas to install unit in case things didn't go well. that is today. I had a difficult time getting old unit. It ended up breaking apart while I tried to extract balancing unit. It took me about 1 hour to remove unit from plumbing. I installed new balancing unit and installed the new cartridge unit that was bought earlier. And then CRACK went the cartridge. I tightened screw a little bit to much. I still had old cartridge so I put it on. After water was turned on instead of a flow of about 12oz per minute I now have a drip of approx every 5 seconds. It appears the drip is coming where the cartridge meets the balancing unit. I am thinking I might want to take o-rings out of new cracked cartridge and put them into old cartridge.

thanks to all that have posted here.