Shower won't turn off - Homebase Westminster Concentric Mixer

Hello all, I've got one of these:
Homebase Westminster Concentric Mixer
Instructions here

It's about 6 months old, and this morning it decided not to turn off. My wife says it was very stiff to turn on this morning, and now when you rotate the handle to the off position, it slips round with a bit of resistance, turning the shower down a little, but not off.

I've turned off the water supply to the house for the day as I had to go to work, but will try to fix this tonight.

Does anyone have any advice regarding this? I don't know if something will just need cleaning / greasing / tightening, or if something might need replacing - I understand no one can know for sure, but any thoughts would be appreciated.

One thing I'm not sure about, is that it looks like there's a screw at the front that will allow the controls to slide off (I'm looking at page two of the instructions above), however this has the ceramic white "Westminster 1902" cap (glued?) on at the moment, and I'm not sure how to get it off - I presume that if I try to leaver it with a screw driver I'm likely to break it. Is there a recommended technique? From the instructions it looks like there's also an "adapter" under that before the screw - not sure if this will just pop off or what?

As a guide, I'm a keen but inexperienced diyer - I can do most things once I know how!

Thanks all,
James

rather than you turning the water off for the whole house if it had been plumbed in correctly, there should be an isolation valve on the piping near the shower. Which would allow you to just turn off the water supplying the shower.

Once you disassemble there will probably be a cartridge inside that needs replacing (or you might be able to get away with giving it a good clean). You won't know exactly what you need until you disassemble.

Thanks Storms, I think I'd need to take the side off the bath to get to the valve, which would involve ruining the sealant so I'm avoiding it for the moment!
The cartridge that you think might need cleaning or replacing - is that the "thermostatic cartridge" - part 22 on the instructions?
Many thanks

yes, but seen as you're opening it you may aswell replace 19,21 and 12 which are seals and washers( assuming you can get the parts! - which may be tricky)

Indeed - lets see what happens if / when I get inside. Any advice or getting it open with breaking the ceramic cap bit?

Hi all, an update for you. I dismantled the mixer as best I could, but when I got down to the last bits (K & L in the instructions), it all got a bit scary. I think K probably is supposed to unscrew, however I was too scared about cracking the tiles around the water pipes, so I didn't give it too much force with the spanner, and so it didn't budge. I did however, turn the bolt bit on L, which was pretty stiff, but did just about move. I turned it about 90deg anticlockwise, just to see what would happen, then couldn't really turn it back.

The result of this random bodging, is the shower is now fixed... The only difference from before is that the on / off lever used to move 180deg from off to on, now it only moves about 150deg, but it does now turn off and on fully.

So, I don't know what I did, I don't know if it's ok that I turned part L 90deg, and I don't know if I have wrecked anything else, but it's (currently) working!

Please do let me know if you think I've done anything bad, or if you know what I might have done to fix this / what I should have done to fix this instead. I'll enjoy a shower in the meantime.

Thanks,
James
PS. plastic washers were all in perfect condition (the shower's only 6 months old) so I don't think there's any need to replace.

James Gretton said:

Please do let me know if you think I've done anything bad, or if you know what I might have done to fix this / what I should have done to fix this instead. I'll enjoy a shower in the meantime.

Click to expand...

You should have returned it to Homebase for a replacement under warranty