Shower Wall Removal?

[ebemis]

Just curious if anyone out there has ever tried to remove the Shower Wall (plastic hardshell) for any sort of repairs or not?

I see a series of plastic (automotive trim piece style) "buttons" on the wall that from the back side in the cabinet appear to me just to be pushed into drilled holes in the luan wood sidewalls. I hate the thought of trying to pull on one or all of those to remove because I am sure some will break and some will destroy the holes in the wall and never hold the same again.

There are braided nylon hose connections to PEX "T's" which i know will leak when weather gets chilly. If access is achievable I would want to remove those and replace them with 100% PEX and PEX crimp Rings instead. I might not want to tear that far into trying to replace that configuration but if someone has removed the shower wall with success and no headache I would love to hear about it.

[Thomas ho]

those push in gromets come out easily. pry pin out and the whole plug comes out. easy to do.

[ebemis]

AWESOME thanks for the note!

[Kcab6533]

We did it. It was scary but was the only way to get at the pex pipes short of taking the whole underbelly off. Turned our the Pex wasn't crimped properly. We has the tool and crimped them all. Put the shower back together took us 2 days to complete it. Not fun and our FR vibe is new.

[ebemis]

AHHH Thanks for sharing that! Any chance you took any pictures along the way??

I have the same issue the main supply line departs my rear storage compartment in two branches, one goes under floor to get to kitchen the other goes behind the shower and there is a white plastic PEX "T" that has Flexible Braided Nylon hose going up to the Shower Valve and that was a "drip point" when I camped in cold over Thanksgiving week. I can see that joint clearly from the rear compartment just no way to reach it at all.....unless I pull the shower wall..... and then I am scared if I commit to going that far that behind the plastic wall will be the luan ply wall and I wont be any closer to reaching those connection points to try and fix them!

So I will say THANK YOU for sharing your effort/results and also encourage you not to get too disappointed...... Our ROO is brand new as well and the water leaks only showed up once the supply water was cold enough to make all those terrible Flex-Poly hose connections with PEX cinch clamps leak... so NOT the right way to make that connection sadly! :-(

I don't know if FR will answer, I am going to try to email and ask them about the selection of the PEX connectors. Our old ROO had plastic PEX fittings as well but all of them were black in color and not white. That old ROO also had some Nylon Flex hoses attached with the same PEX cinch rings too and they never leaked at all. Our new ROO all of the PEX fittings are white plastic and every one of them leaked at the poly connections....so I am wondering if that plastic was different and the cold supply water caused them to shrink in diameter when the black ones on our old ROO didn't...it is the only thing I can think of.

[Kcab6533]

He took out the surround super carefully. It was a 2 day project total. Of course we found the leak under the TT late in the day.
Next he tightened/crimped all the pex connections that were loose. There were 10 places.
He put tissue paper under the connections over night to see if the leaking stopped. It had!
Then he carefully resembled and glued and caulked it all. We were out of a shower for 2 days but on the 3rd day we showered!!

[ebemis]

HOLY COW!!!!
That looks like quite an exploratory surgery event to me!!

THANKS SO MUCH for sharing!!
Ed