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A shower renovation is one of the most satisfying home upgrades — new tile, a frameless glass door, a rainfall showerhead. What homeowners discover once the walls are open, however, sometimes changes the scope (and budget) of the project significantly. Understanding the plumbing that lives behind your shower walls before the tile comes off leads to better decisions, fewer surprises, and cleaner outcomes.
What’s Actually Behind the Shower Wall
A typical Atlanta shower has several plumbing components in the wall cavity:
- The shower valve: The valve body that controls both water temperature and flow rate. This is the most important mechanical component in the shower and the one most likely to need attention during a renovation.
- Supply lines: Hot and cold lines running from the home’s supply system to the valve body.
- The shower arm and flange: The pipe stub-out that the showerhead connects to.
- Drain assembly: Below the floor, connecting the shower pan drain to the home’s drain system.
The Shower Valve Decision
When a shower is being renovated — tiles replaced, walls opened — it’s the right time to evaluate the shower valve. Replacing a valve with the wall closed is a major job requiring cutting access; replacing it when the wall is already open costs a fraction of the effort.
Older Atlanta homes frequently have:
- Two-handle valves: Separate hot and cold handles, common in homes built before the 1980s. These work but lack pressure-balancing protection, meaning a toilet flush or another fixture activating can cause sudden temperature spikes in the shower.
- Older single-handle valves: May lack anti-scald protection. Federal standards require pressure-balancing valves in new shower installations, and renovations are typically a trigger to bring the installation up to current code.
A modern pressure-balancing valve (Moen, Delta, Kohler are the standard Atlanta choices) maintains shower temperature within a few degrees even when other fixtures run. It’s the baseline standard for any renovation, and upgrading during an existing renovation adds a small additional cost in parts — a small investment given that the wall is already open.
Thermostatic valves — which maintain precise temperature by mixing hot and cold water at a preset ratio — are a premium option for master bath renovations and work especially well with multiple body spray configurations or rain showerheads with high flow requirements.
Supply Line Condition
Once the wall is open, your plumber or tile contractor can see the supply lines. This is valuable information:
- Galvanized steel supply lines in an older Atlanta home may be corroded enough that the renovation is a good time to repipe that section
- Copper lines in good condition can be reused
- Polybutylene supply lines (a gray plastic pipe used widely in Atlanta homes from the late 1970s through mid-1990s) should always be replaced when accessible — the material is known to fail and is no longer produced
Drain Work in a Shower Renovation
If you’re changing the shower pan — particularly converting from a prefab shower base to a custom tile floor — the drain location matters. A prefab base has the drain at the center; a custom tile shower can have the drain in various positions depending on the slope design. Moving a drain even a few inches requires opening the floor and rerouting the drain line, which adds meaningful cost to the renovation.
For tile showers, the drain assembly needs to be compatible with the tile/mortar bed installation. Linear drains — which run along one wall and allow large-format tile without cuts — are a popular design choice in Atlanta renovations but require a different slope direction in the subfloor. Discuss the drain location with your plumber before your tile contractor begins work.
Adding a Bodyspray System or Rainfall Showerhead
Multi-outlet shower systems — rain showerheads, body sprays, handheld wands — have aggregate flow rates that can significantly exceed a standard shower supply line’s capacity. A 3/4-inch supply line to the shower handles the flow; a 1/2-inch line may not, particularly if the system has four or more outlets.
Thermostatic valves designed for multi-outlet systems solve the temperature control problem; the supply line size solves the flow problem. Both should be evaluated by a plumber during renovation planning, not discovered when the new fixtures are installed and the water pressure is disappointing.
Permitting in Atlanta
A cosmetic shower renovation — replacing tile and fixtures without moving the valve or drain — typically doesn’t require a permit. Any work that involves moving the valve, relocating the drain, changing the supply line configuration, or converting to a different shower configuration (bath-to-shower, expanding the size) usually requires a plumbing permit. Fix and Flow handles all necessary permits for the plumbing scope of shower renovations.
Let’s Talk Through Your Renovation
Fix and Flow handles the plumbing side of shower renovations across Atlanta — valve replacement, supply line work, drain relocation, and permit management. Visit our shower and bathtub repair page or call (404) 800-FLOW to discuss what your renovation involves before the tiles come off.