Why does my shower drip after I turn it off?
The cartridge inside the valve has stopped sealing. It's a replaceable insert behind the handle, and it's the single most common shower repair we do. Hard water is why they fail here faster than the manufacturer expects — mineral builds on the moving surfaces and scores the seals until the valve can't close fully.
You’ll usually feel it coming. The handle gets stiff, or the temperature swings when someone runs water elsewhere. On a pressure-balance valve that swing is the spool binding on scale; it’s supposed to move freely to protect you from a scald when a toilet flushes.
Where is the water actually coming from?
This is the question that sets the price, so we answer it first. Water on the bathroom floor, a damp spot on the ceiling below, or a soft baseboard on the other side of the shower wall can each come from three completely different failures, and only one of them is a quick fix.
| What you're seeing |
Likely source |
Whose job it is |
| Drips from the head after shutoff |
Worn valve cartridge |
Plumbing only. Short job |
| Water seeping from the escutcheon or spout |
Failed valve body seal or a loose spout connection |
Plumbing, usually through an access panel |
| Grout and caulk cracked at the corners |
Surface water getting behind tile |
Tile work. Catch it here and it stays cheap |
| Damp baseboard outside the shower wall |
Pan or liner has failed and water is leaving the enclosure |
Both. Tile comes out before plumbing goes back |
| Stain on the ceiling below an upstairs shower |
Drain connection, or the pan again |
We open the ceiling to tell you which. Cheaper than opening tile |
What happens if the shower pan has failed?
Here’s the limit of what a plumber can do for you, better said now than halfway through demo. The pan is the waterproof layer under your tile floor, and once it’s leaking, no caulk, grout or plumbing seals it back up. It comes out, and the tile floor comes out with it, usually with the bottom course of wall tile.
So a pan failure is a tile job as much as a plumbing job. We handle the drain, the plumbing side of the rebuild, and the water test that proves the new pan holds before anyone tiles over it. The tile itself is a different trade. Mortar-bed pans in 1970s and 80s Red Oak and Waxahachie bathrooms are at the age where this is a normal finding.
If someone quotes you a pan leak as a two-hour plumbing repair, get a second opinion.
Why is the water pressure in one shower so weak?
Start with the showerhead — unscrew it and check the screen for scale, the same mineral that kills cartridges. If it's clean, the next suspect is the cartridge itself partly blocked, and after that the valve's built-in screens.
Weak pressure in every fixture is a different conversation about the whole supply system rather than this shower. And if pressure dropped off suddenly rather than fading over years, that can point at a supply-side failure somewhere upstream, which is plumbing leak repair territory. Replacing the whole enclosure instead of the valve is shower installation.