Exchanging old bar shower valve with thermostatic

[billybobsky]

Hello,

I have decided to try to exchange my apartment's old bar shower valve with a thermostatic replacement but I've run into one major issue: the old valve's center-to-center distance is 160 mm or so preventing an easy reuse of the already installed s adapters. Fortunately the pipework in the wall seems much closer to the 150 mm standard span, but I am not sure if I can simply remove the old s adapters. They seem to be fairly well set and I cannot identify what was used to lock them into place -- its grey and hairy and overflowing from the pipe end piece. I have no option to cut into the wall or exchange much more than the s-adapter so I wonder if 1) it should be possible to replace the s adapters?, 2) how I should approach that if the answer is yes?, and 3) what is the recommended teflon/pipe joint compound for use during the replacement?

All the best,

billybobsky

 

[ALCPlumbing]

If they are the type of adapters I'm used to seeing they are generally offset so there is a bit of adjustment available and you may be able to rotate them till they are 150mm apart. If not you can buy kits. One is called a shower plate I think that allows you to connect straight onto pipe. However you may find that there is backplate elbows behind the tiles and you can just buy the offset adapters. Trying turning them and see if you can get them the right width apart.

 

[billybobsky]

Thanks for that!

It turns out the offset adapters in the wall were still mobile enough to make the adjustments I needed. It was an easy five minute job in the end...

Thanks again!