I'm usually pretty handy, but I think I just fücked myself.
A few of years ago, I replaced the shower valves (separate hot and cold); easy peasy. Recently one of them started to leak and I decided to fix it tonight. Once I took them out, I saw that the washers didn't look too good, so I decided to replace them. Also, I saw that there was a fair amount of hard-water build up, so I soaked them in CLR. After soaking for an hour or so, I rinsed them off, put the new washers and put them back in.
Trouble is, once I turned the water main back on, no water would come out of the shower from either hot or cold (other faucets in the house worked - problem is isolated to the shower). Okay,: trouble-shooting time. I tried the following to isolate the problem, bit none of these solved the problem:
- Swapped the valves (hot-to-cold / cold-to-hot)
- Tried installing the valves both when completely open and completely closed
- Took out the new washers
- Turned the water main on very briefly to confirm that water was getting to the faucets
Whatever I tried, I could not get water to come out at all. I even took the shower head off to make sure I didn't introduce a blockage there; I got a VERY low (trickle) flow, even with the valves completely open.
The only other thing I can think to try is to buy new valves and if that doesn't work, call a plumber (even though I rent, since I introduced the problem, I can't have the landlord pay for the plumber).
Any suggestions before I try the above?