As the final step in a quick shower re-vamp I need to remove the 25 year old Ideal, external, non-thermostatic mixer. It has the inlets on each side and sits on a square'ish block about 3mm thick. The connection elbows go straight into the wall and seem to be externally threaded - are the pipe trims supposed to screw down the elbow thread and sandwich the whole lot on the wall? If so, any suggestions on how to get them to unscrew?
Many of the surface mounted valves are simply held on by their connections to the pipes. There will normally be nuts somewhere on the inlet that you can undo.
They were often assembled up and then just cemented into place with cement and tiles round the pipes. You may have to chip away the tiles/cement to remove. Trims usually held in place by grubscrews.
If anyone's interested, the valve itself attached to the backplate with a 30 degree twisting action. The backplate was supposed to be held to the wall with 2 screws but the wood had split and the whole thing was effectively hanging on the pipes. With the valve off I could cut the trims off with a dremel (they were quite thick and internally threaded; no grub screws). Total job involved replacing: shower tray, lower 5 rows of (imperial) tiles, several cracked tiles and damaged plasterboard, fixing loose valve, etc. Lots of bu&&ering about but all now done and looks pretty good for a 25 year old shower. Next is to fit a door and sort the floor and skirting.
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