If there is one thing that can drive a person mad, it is certainly a leaking faucet of any kind. When that leaking just so happens to be coming from your shower head, it can truly be aggravating. First off, the shower walls act like an acoustic recording studio allowing the dripping to reverberate and echo throughout the area. Plus, the fact the drips have 5-6 feet to fall before banging off the bottom of the shower means the racket will be even louder than most other faucet leaks. Heaven help you if there is an empty shampoo bottle lying underneath the dripping!

fixing a leaky faucet

This leaking needs to be fixed as soon as possible. Not only is it driving you mad, it is probably running an already too high water bill even higher. So with that being said, turn off all the water to the shower, if possible without turning off the entire house. If you can not turn the water off to just the bathroom, then go ahead and turn it off to everything.

Next, go back in the bathroom and turn on a faucet, letting any water left in the lines to bleed out. On the “just in case” there may still be water in the line, take a hefty towel in the shower with you. Take your hand and try to unscrew the head from the water pipe sticking out of the wall. If it is too tightly secure, use a wrench if needed.

Once you removed the head, look inside the screw threads for a black or white, rubber/plastic gasket called an “O-Ring”. From time to time, these gaskets become old and worn out due to old age or just from drying and cracking. Take a flat head screwdriver, or maybe a butter knife from the kitchen, and pull out this O-Ring. Does it look old and worn out? Hold it up to the light. Has it got any cracks or breaks in, or around, it at all? Now take and hold it for a side view. Slowly turn it around and around. Do you see any area where the O-Ring looks thinner than the rest?

If there are any of these problems with your gasket, or O-Ring, then you have more than likely found your problem and the gasket/O-Ring should be replaced. However, if the gasket looks superb and there is no sign of damage at all, your problem is elsewhere.

Look inside the shower head threads. Are they worn? Does it appear to have been cross-threaded and the grooves chewed up looking? Is there a crack or break anywhere on the plastic shaft where the threads are? If you see any of these things, or damage of any sort to the shower head itself, then this is the issue and your shower head can not be fixed and needs to be replaced. Unless of course the thread shaft and shower head are detachable from one another.

Now if there is no problem with the gasket, and the shower head appears to be fine, then turn your attention to the pipe sticking out of the shower wall. Take a flashlight and look closely at the threads. Are they ok? If you see any issue with the threads to the pipe, this too can easily be replaced. Simply remove the inspection panel on the back side of the shower, take a wrench and remove the pipe and take it to the hardware store to purchase a replacement.

The problem has to be one of these three areas. You only need to figure out which one it is, remove the problem and replace it with a new, quieter version. Remember, a leaking faucet can be noisy, but it can also be expensive if you continue to allow it to drip and spray water everywhere every time you turn it on to bathe.