So as title states, I have a loose shower arm - the 2X4 blocking it is attached to isn't securely fastened and allows the shower arm to move up and down pretty freely. It seems like the the tile immediately around the hole doesn't have backer board attached.
This is in a short term rental property, so I need the fix to be very sturdy, but there's no access through the hole or from the backside of the wall to re-attach the blocking. I see people use JB water weld or expanding foam to fix this type issue. I didn't want to make the pipe unremovable in case other service or repair is needed.
I was thinking of fashioning some wood cladding or using pipe insulation to go around the pipe and fill the gap, but I'm a little concerned about transferring force (something like an 8 year old dangling from it or some other nonsense
) to the unsupported tile and having it crack.
Calling on the hive's collective experience for a solid fix, thanks!
Ooof! I can't think of any good ways to fix well without demo'ing some of the tile to get in there to make a proper repair. You probably want to make sure that a slow leak isn't causing rot in there also.
I'll sit back and see if people smarter than I can offer a solution.
No good fix without opening the wall. If that's not an option, expanding foam would be likely the best, but I'd be hesitant.
The arm itself has little strength, less still if you have hard water and things corrode.
What is on the opposite side of that wall? If it's an interior wall with just sheet rock, easy fix. If it's exterior, less so. But opening a wall is really the only good solution for a proper fix.
Luckily, it's not leaking or anything just loose and moves around when people adjust the shower head.
Unfortunately, it's on an exterior brick wall, so not able to get in that way. Not gonna open up the wall at this point - may regret that later, but working to a deadline at the moment.
In reply to sevenracer :
If you're good at measuring, you may be able to anchor that backing board from outside by drilling through the brick and using some long screws to grab that backing board. If that makes sense. They could even be countersunk and covered with mortar or grout. Of course, I'm not offering to do that job either.
my inner hack says to just fill it with foam.
In reply to barefootskater (Shaun) :
I definitely would not trust myself to be that good at measuring! And would be worried that I would manage to drill through something important going in blind through the brick.
UPDATE: I said in the title that this was a dumb question - looked at it again this morning, and it turns out the wood blocking was not moving, the right angle fitting that the shower arm threads into, was only secured with a side screw and missing the one on top of the fitting. Was able to tape a screw to the end of a screwdriver and had just enough space to get in past the arm, drive the screw and secure it properly. So job done, no hackery (aka Great Stuff) required.
In reply to sevenracer :
Now that's a proper fix. Glad it wasn't anything worse.
