Leaking shower control(?)

Hi,

Sorry for my lack of proper term usage, but I have a leaking shower knob. The bathroom has three control knobs about the spout for the tub, one for hot, one to turn on the shower, and one for cold water. The shower one leaks water out of the front when it is turned so that the shower won't run. I hope that makes sense.

For example, if I want to take a shower, there is no leak, if I want to take a bath, there's a mini shower about the water spout. Clearly it's something that has to be replaced/fixed. How hard is it going to be to replace the part? Would it be better for me to get a contractor to do it? How much of a pain is it to remove the tile? With a problem like this, would only taking showers be an issue?

Thanks for any help!

 

Not too hard, depending on the brand..

Any markings to ID what it is? You may be able to just remove the handle and tighten the nut underneath. It sounds like the packing (which seals the shaft of the valve) has deteriorated. Sometimes a simple 1/8-1/4 turn of a wrench can fix it.

The problem with any plumbing is that parts corrode and bond to each other.

First step is taking the handle off.

You can post a picture to a site like photobucket, then copy the html code back here if you need to.

 

There's no markings whatsoever. I took off the handle and the covering to see what it all looks like back there. Sorry for the lack of light, had to use my cell phone. the pics are pretty big so here's links to them:

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the part that the knob slides over slid right off and it's pretty rusted through and through as you might tell. Thanks again.

 

Yeah..pretty blurry..and with these old eyes..I can't tell. If there is a nut on the shaft..before you get to another place to put a wrench on, you can try turning it 1/8 turn or so and see what it does.

You may need to turn the water off and remove the parts, then take them to a good hardware or plumbing supply store. They could give you a complete repair kit.

 

There's no nut on the shaft. The shaft just comes straight out of the wall to where the valve is located. The shaft is about 2 1/2 inches long. Where it meets the valve there is a bit of threads for the cover to go onto. It's at these threads that the leak occurs. Now that I look at it more and more, I'm starting to think that this was an issue long ago, due to the rust on the shaft, but just started to manifest itself.

edit/self-aside: does all of plumbing talk always sound this dirty? or is it just me?