Let me first just say that I am brand new to plumping. I have no experience, so please bear with me.
I recently moved into a new apartment building in Toronto. The building is from the 70s. When I moved in the apartment had a terrible shower head attached (1.5 GPM Earth Low Flow). The flow is very poor and the water stream does not spread out well. As a student I rely on a morning shower (and coffee) to wake up on mornings where I didn't get much sleep the night before. So a good shower is very important and this shower head just isn't cutting it.
Anyway, I bought a 2.5 GPM Glacier Bay shower head. When I install it and turn the shower on I seem to get two outcomes. Either the shower runs but over the course of the shower (usually within 2-3 minutes) the flow of water has drastically reduced from what it was like initially (to the point where the flow on the low-flow shower head was better). The other outcome that seems to happen is that I hear a loud rattling/humming sound from the pipes within the wall. The closest video I can find with a similar sound is here (skip to 0:15):
As soon as that occurs I immediate shut off the water. This humming sound doesn't usually happen immediately, but normally within the first 1-5 minutes of the shower. When it first happened the tub faucet pushed out from the wall (I can see exposed pipe in the shower that wasn't there before it happened) and that's why I am so immediate at shutting off the water.
The landlord of the building and the superintendents are extremely unhelpful and are nasty people to deal with so, if possible, I'd like to fix this on my own.
Any ideas on things I can do/try? Is it possible that the 2.5 GPM shower head is overdrawing the water from the pipe? I believe the pipe is a standard 0.5".
Thanks so much for your help!! I really appreciate it!
Ethan
Edit: Attached is a photo of what the tub faucet is like. That happened when the humming occurred, it was not pulled out.
I recently moved into a new apartment building in Toronto. The building is from the 70s. When I moved in the apartment had a terrible shower head attached (1.5 GPM Earth Low Flow). The flow is very poor and the water stream does not spread out well. As a student I rely on a morning shower (and coffee) to wake up on mornings where I didn't get much sleep the night before. So a good shower is very important and this shower head just isn't cutting it.
Anyway, I bought a 2.5 GPM Glacier Bay shower head. When I install it and turn the shower on I seem to get two outcomes. Either the shower runs but over the course of the shower (usually within 2-3 minutes) the flow of water has drastically reduced from what it was like initially (to the point where the flow on the low-flow shower head was better). The other outcome that seems to happen is that I hear a loud rattling/humming sound from the pipes within the wall. The closest video I can find with a similar sound is here (skip to 0:15):
As soon as that occurs I immediate shut off the water. This humming sound doesn't usually happen immediately, but normally within the first 1-5 minutes of the shower. When it first happened the tub faucet pushed out from the wall (I can see exposed pipe in the shower that wasn't there before it happened) and that's why I am so immediate at shutting off the water.
The landlord of the building and the superintendents are extremely unhelpful and are nasty people to deal with so, if possible, I'd like to fix this on my own.
Any ideas on things I can do/try? Is it possible that the 2.5 GPM shower head is overdrawing the water from the pipe? I believe the pipe is a standard 0.5".
Thanks so much for your help!! I really appreciate it!
Ethan
Edit: Attached is a photo of what the tub faucet is like. That happened when the humming occurred, it was not pulled out.
Last edited by a moderator: