We are currently building our home in the Utah area that is within 30 min of Salt Lake City. Our homebuilder recently decided to place the shower head in our shower facing the door - needless to say that wasn't going to work for us(don't really want to clean up a puddle every time we take a shower). So our only other option, according to them is to place the shower head on the exterior wall and keep the valve on the interior wall. The home builder claims that they discussed with the insulation company on how to properly insulate the shower head pipe. The insulation company told them that if they used an R-30 Rock Wool batt behind the pipe that it would be completely fine. So a couple of questions for the community:

  1. Does this sounds like a reasonable fix(in an area that has below 0 temps)? is it normal to place a R-30 batt behind a shower head?
  2. If you run a shower head line from an interior wall to an exterior wall(probably 3 ft run) do you loose pressure?
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    I thought it was against code to put a shower head on the wall opposite of the door, but I'm not a plumber so I don't know that for sure. Something to do with being unable to adjust the water from outside the shower while being protected from scalding water. Maybe someone else here knows what I'm talking about. – Dotes Aug 6 at 22:33
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    @Dotes that is exactly what we thought too - and why we called them out. He claims they passed 4-way inspection, but the inspector doesn't know where the shower door will be at the end of construction. – DEnumber50 Aug 8 at 0:40

I don’t know why you would need rock wool any r30 should work. As far as adding length and bends to the shower it should not matter. All shower heads have flow restriction built in so your limiting factor is the head itself

  • thanks for the reply - so R30 should be enough? even with some rough winter temps? – DEnumber50 Aug 6 at 19:55
  • My home has 4” walls and R16 in the walls my bath tub / shower , toilet and kitchen sink are all on exterior walls, we get in the - f range every now and then (not often) but the pipes are not freezing (the last plumbing update was in the 90’s) . When it gets into the low teens we do allow the bathroom sink to dribble at night as it is the furthest away from the pressure tank. On those really cold nights I also open the cabinets at the sink and bathroom and it has worked for us. – Ed Beal Aug 7 at 14:06
  • thanks for this - sounds like it might be an acceptable fix – DEnumber50 Aug 8 at 0:42

There are shower heads which have a removable head in which the water is conducted through a flexible hose. It might be possible to have the valve on one wall and the shower head holder on a perpendicular wall. The water supply connection point of the flexible hose would be close to the corner on the same wall as the valve so the hose would hang close the perpendicular wall where the head was fastened.

I am thinking about this type Moen commercial height adjustable shower head Less costly version consumer model of height adjutable shower head

Moen height adjustable shower head

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