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Author:
sum (FL)
I have a shower drain that apparently either the tile or paint or drywall tradesmen have rinse off their tools or dump excess materials into so the entire drain cover and surrounding tiles were caked with some stuff which could be joint compound or grout or thinset or whatever and I spent some time chipping off and cleaning up.
This is what I have to work with after the clean up, The mounting holes are 3-3/8" apart.
So I ordered a new drain cover by Westbrass. The cover is nice but I kept thinking, why would they make the holes larger in diameter than the drain screws? Isn't this a bad design? I had to tape the drain cover first because I was nervous I might drop the screws and they would fall through the holes.
Anyway, the problem is the screws that come with the cover do not bottom. They go in about 1/16" and stopped.
Are these screws standard or they can be different from brand to brand? I am not sure what brand the shower drain is...I am guessing Oatey or Sioux Chief. I don't know if these screws won't bottom because I need different sizes, or whether there may be trapped grout of whatever inside the holes preventing the screws from going deeper, or may be the threads were abused or crossed. Are these supposed to be imperial or metric?
If I know the size of the machine screws, I can get a tapping bit and clean the threads, but I may end up puncturing the plastic drain which will be bad.
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Author:
steve (CA)
Sum, is that drain plastic or metal? It looks like white painted(powder coated?) metal with some of the paint scraped off and bare metal showing.
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Author:
sum (FL)
steve, it is plastic. The reason you are seeing a darker color along some edges is because initially except for the center hole, the rest of this drain was filled with some cement/stucco/grout material. I shoved a rag into the center hole and used a flat head screwdriver to slowly chisel out this stuff, the gray color you see is not metal exposed but the residual of the cement. The drain was also partially blocked so whoever did this poured the same stuff down the drain as well, I snaked it and it seems to be draining fine now.
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Author:
george 7941 (Canada)
Get a bottoming tap to match the new screws and tap new threads. Even if you go through the plastic, there will be no leaks if you use some tape on the threads of the screws.
Small drain leaks are self sealing to an extent because of the debris in the waste water. The soap scum acts as a binding agent for the finer particles.
Edited 1 times.
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