I recently bought a house that has only one shower. Upon inspection, the home inspector said that the water heater was in good condition and was relatively new.

Now that we’ve moved in, we have noticed that the shower does not get hot. It gets warm, but not hot. I checked the temperature gauge on the water heater and it was set to 125 degrees. I turned it up to 150 to see if that would help, and it did for a day or two.

The other faucets get hot without problems. The kitchen sink faucet has low pressure when we turn the hot water on there. The faucet in the bathroom that has the shower gets hot and maintains pressure for the most part.

There is a half bath located in the room that is adjacent to the water heater. We’re renovating that bathroom, so it has not been used, thus I don’t know how well that faucet performs.

What could it be? I suspect there is an anti-scald feature that might be what is causing the water to be warm, not hot. Delta (the faucet maker) has instructions how to change the setting on the scald feature, but I can’t get the handle off to access it. It says to use an allen wrench, but when I look at the screw holding it in place, there appears to be rust or some sort of corrosion preventing me from seeing if I should use an allen wrench or a screw driver.

Please help. The cold showers are unbearable.

When I turn the hot water off in my kitchen the water still continues to run. I discovered that if I use my screw driver to tighten the screw in the top of the handle back in it turns off.
Now, this doesn’t work anymore. When I turn the water off it still runs and the handle wiggles even though the screw is in there.
I guess it’s stripped. I asked my landlord to fix it and he said he had to have the plummer fix it in a week….The problem is I’m having a party this weekend….

Is this a "chic" friendly job that I could just fix myself? It seems like it should be rather easy… if so, how do I fix it?

I have an American Standard single handled kitchen faucet (it looks like a pretty cheap model). I removed the plastic cap on top of the handle and removed the screw on top of the handle and the handle will not come off no matter how hard I pull on it. All of the directions online show a screw underneath the handle, my faucet does not have that. I have removed the only screw I can find. I’m driving myself nuts trying to figure this out, pretty soon I may resort to a sledge hammer
Thank you, prying it up gently with a flat screw driver did the trick and saved my sanity