Coming up on 6 years in this house and will be the 3rd shower cartridge I have replaced since being here.
Yes, I am using the expensive Delta brand not some knock off.

It is either freezing cold or hardly bearable hot. Put in a new cartridge and the adjustability works just right.

In our old house I never once changed a cartridge and we were there nearly 7 years. I think it may have been a Moen.

Feel like ditching this setup but am afraid of going down that rabbit hole. As I need a new shower door so if I rip out the shower door, I’ll rip out this fiberglass insert that is a pain to clean to do a tile shower, that will lead to ripping out the old tile floor, which will likely lead to ripping out the double vanity.
Toilet is still good so it would just go back in.

Sounds awful painful to the wallet.

Feel lucky. My sink Delta's are all needing replacement after 18 years. Only the cartridges need replacement, but I can't get them out as they are frozen & the "nut" is plastic that falls apart. Soaking in vinegar could not unfreeze the cartridge.

2 years seems very abnormal. Do you have especially hard water?

My last house had Delta fixtures, and the only cartridge I needed to change in 12 years was one faucet cartridge when that sink's hot water started to slowly drip.

(I also did the master shower cartridge when remodeling the shower, but that was just as a convenience; it didn't need it yet but I figured I might as well do it while the whole thing was cracked open.)

I built my house in 1997 and installed two Delta shower faucets and have never replaced the cartridge. I have replaced the springs and rubber seats a couple times.
Delta will send free parts if you call 800-345-DELTA.
Sounds like something is mucking up the pressure balance spool in there.
What is your domestic water situation, Well? City?
Do you have alot of iron/ minerals in the water? does it go through a softener?

I’ve been changing my moen cartridge every few years or so. So far, I just call moen and they ship one out to me under lifetime warranty. Takes about 10 minutes. A small hassle but I’ve gotten used to it. The first time was a bitch though. I was swearing a lot.

City water.
No water softener. Not sure if I have hard water.

Two things come to mind.

Have you checked the water pressure?
Do you have a water filter to keep fine particles out?

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:
Two things come to mind.

Have you checked the water pressure?
Do you have a water filter to keep fine particles out?

No pressure issues.

Yes, there is a whole house filter.

I recently replaced a whole American Standard kitchen faucet bought new in 1976. Never replaced anything on it all that time. The new AS put in I doubt will do so well.
My shower and lav faucets are all AS. Going strong since about 1990.

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:
Two things come to mind.

Have you checked the water pressure?
Do you have a water filter to keep fine particles out?

No pressure issues.

Yes, there is a whole house filter.

Too high of pressure causes problems too. Have you checked water pressure?

The place I rented in Calgary had lots of little plumbing issues. I finally stuck a gauge on it and it was 80 psi. I dialed back a little on the valve by the meter and got the pressure down.

I've had the same problems with the delta shower in our master. I just replaced it again a couple weeks ago. I found a brass commercial cartridge on amazon that I tried this time.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005..._encoding=UTF8&psc=1

Its weird because I have never replaced the cartridge in our other bathroom. Same model as in our master.

No you shouldn't be replacing them every two years.

The question is what is causing the problem? How many other shower/tubs do you have? Do they get about the same use? Any issues with them? Are they the same Delta? Any issues with any sinks? Have any of your sink aerators been clogged or lost some water flow?

Next time you remove the old cartridge fell around inside the diverter for any rough spots.

Make sure your household water pressure isn't too high. That can kill water heaters, cartridges and a myriad of other things.

I've replaced ours once in 21 years. I think it was at about year 15.

My delta sink faucet was becoming very hard to rotate(the body) from one sink to the other. Tore it apart and found that there were eruptions inside the body of the faucet that were growing due to the water....I sanded the inside down and then coated it with silicone grease...works like a charm. It was actually a poor casting and finish on the inside of the faucet, you could see he nickel was bare in a few spots.

Our water comes from Lake Belton which is a Corp of engineers lake/dam for creating water at FT Hood. The water is heavily laden with calcium due to the limestone. But the limestone hasn’t affected the delta faucets or shower heads...

You could not be replacing them at that frequency...my dad put them in a home we built in 1986 and here hasn’t been one problem with them.

This is the only shower only I the house. The other two are shower tub combos and they both have Deltas but they get used no where near the amount this one does.
The basement might get 10 showers a year and the kids get a a decent amount but the boys usually use our whirlpool tub.

Guess I need to figure out how to test water pressure.

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
Guess I need to figure out how to test water pressure.

Definitely. When you said "no pressure issues" earlier, I assumed that you had already checked it.

Luckily, it's dead simple to test.

Go to the hardware store and get a water pressure test gauge. (They're like 10 bucks.)

Make sure all the fixtures in the house are off. You'll want to test when there's no other water running, so give everyone a heads-up so that nobody's running the dishwasher, or doing laundry, or flushing a toilet, or filling a water glass while you're trying to test.

Screw the gauge to an outside spigot like you would a garden hose. (If you're facing freezing temps and don't want to risk using an outside spigot, or you have your outside spigots all wrapped up for winter, you can unhook your washing machine's cold water line from the cold supply spigot and use that spigot to attach the gauge and test pressure.)

Slowly turn the handle on the spigot until it's fully open and the gauge's needle stops moving, then read the pressure reading on the gauge.

Anything below 30 psi is too low. Anything above 80 is too high. Ideally, a house should be around 50ish.

Test it a few different times throughout the day, in case your neighborhood water pressure is experiencing periodic spikes.

If your water pressure is too high it can cause premature wear on fixtures and cartridges. If your water pressure is over 80 PSI, you'll either need to adjust the pressure regulator on your main water supply line to lower the pressure, or have a plumber rebuild/replace your pressure regulator if it's gone bad and is no longer doing its job (as they tend to do every 15ish years), or have a plumber install a pressure regulator if you never had one in the first place.

A bad expansion tank can also cause high pressure spikes.

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:
A bad expansion tank can also cause high pressure spikes.

He's on city water.

quote:

Originally posted by Excam_Man:

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:
A bad expansion tank can also cause high pressure spikes.

He's on city water.

Most cities here install back flow preventers now, so you must have an expansion tank to absorb the pressure created by the water heater.