Until recently, our shower had 3 problems of which I was dimly aware and had mostly compensated for by changing my habits.

The first was that the diverter on the tub spout sometimes gets stuck in the “shower” position. Once the water is turned off, it’s supposed to fall back down in the tub position. That way, when you turn the water on the next time the (invariably) cold water with flow into the tub. However, if it’s stuck in the shower position, then when you turn it on, you get a face full of cold water. So, I’ve gotten in the habit of checking both when turning off the water and when turning it on, that the diverter is in the rest position.

The second problem is that the water was getting colder. Or rather, wasn’t getting as hot. This was a gradual process, and I assumed it was just me misremembering or something. However, as you’ll see later, I now believe it to be the case.

The third problem, and the last one to manifest, was that the faucet would leak if you turned it off “slowly.” If you went straight from hot to off with a good ol’ flick of the wrist then it would be fine. But if you took a detour at cold, or especially if you turned it on just a trickle and then turned it back off it would drip. Hence, I got into the habit of turning it all the way on before turning it all the way off.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. All progress, therefore, depends upon the unreasonable man.

—George Bernard Shaw

I spent several months being eminently reasonable. Then the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune turned me into an unreasonable man, and I was able to make progress.

One day, the shower knob started spinning (almost) freely, and only with some luck and cajoling was I able to turn off the flow of water. I didn’t have time to fix it for a few days, so I told Rachel that we would have to shower in the kids bathroom. Once we did that, I noticed that the water got hotter! So I hadn’t been dreaming after all.

I assumed that the faucet was broken and that we would have to pull it all out and replace it, so I asked Rachel what kind of shower handle she likes. She even floated the idea of redoing the entire bathroom. Ours is pretty plain as far as bathrooms go, so we’ve thought about remodeling it before, but it’s a big project and not one we were particularly eager to take on at the moment. Still, if we had to replace the shower, why not do the whole thing?

Luckily, before we invested too much energy into thinking about a remodel, I removed the handle to take a look at things. That’s when I noticed that the plastic handle had simply broken. It consists of a plastic grip (which was fine) and a plastic sheathe which connects it to the metal of the valve itself. This sheathe had cracked lengthwise so that upon turning, the crack would widen and it wouldn’t apply the full force to turning the valve. That was why the water didn’t get as hot—it wouldn’t turn the valve all the way to hot. It was also why I turning it off from a dribble wouldn’t work—it couldn’t transfer enough force to overcome the friction of the valve (instead it merely widened the crack a bit). Fortunately for me, it was an easy fix so that we don’t have to contemplate remodeling the bathroom until we are ready.

It makes me wonder how many of my other problems would be as straightforward to solve if I just knew their true cause.