faucet woes

bpress54

The tub in my house has an 8" old style faucet; that is, a hot valve, a cold valve, a center diverter for the shower, and a tub spout. Yesterday the water pressure was fine coming out of both sides, today the hot side has hardly any flow at all. Cold side is normal, and both hot and cold on the vanity next to the tub are working fine. Any ideas what may have caused this?

blingbling

Could be a number of things? Does the handle free spin on the stem? Could be a chunk of rust or calcium that made it past the seat into the stem. Could be the gasket on the stem ripped and is blocking the water. I would suggest shutting off water and removing the seat and stem. Replace with new one or remove obstruction.

DannyT

do you have galvanized piping? anything been done to the water heater?

joecaption

Frozen pipe?
Really need to go back and add your location to your profile.

bpress54

OK, the handle does not spin free on the stem. The piping is all brand new Pex, and it is not frozen. I know for sure because A) it's inside the house and B) the vanity faucet is fed off the same line as the bath tub and it works fine. I pulled the stem out and looked inside the faucet body and I do not see any obstructions. The washer was pretty well flattened out but not torn or raggedy, so I replaced it. I also disconnected the supply on the back side of the faucet and looked in there. No junk, goo, rust, calcium, or chunks of anything inside. The handle (stem) does seem a bit hard to turn, but I don't know why that would cause the flow to be restricted. As I said on my first post, the cold side works fine and the hot side of the vanity has good pressure. The hot side on the tub is barely a trickle. Suggestions? It's a Central Brass faucet, if that matters and is probably over 50 years old.

Fairview

Sometimes bold measures need to be taken in trouble shooting. Leave the stem of the troublesome hot side out and momentarily turn the water back on to see if it will squirt to the back side of the tub.

bpress54

I will try that. What does it mean if the water does shoot out to the back of the tub? What does it mean if is does not?

Fairview

Does - the problem is between the valve seat and the faucet spout.

Does not - the problem is before valve.

bpress54

Thank you. As I said, the pressure at the vanity faucet is fine, so I'm going to assume something is lodged in the hot side between the valve seat and the tub spout.