Shower Faucet
Shower faucets are an important decision. Imagine installing a kitchen faucet and three months later the faucet fails. What do you do? Simple you take it out and put in a new one. Yes there is some inconvenience but not a big deal. Now imagine doing that with a shower faucet. Wow, what a difference. You now have to rip apart your wall on the back side of the shower enclosure, or pull out shower tile or cut into your shower surround. This to me is a tough shower repair to fix. Not the worst shower repair though.
When choosing a shower faucet you should look for design, functionality, as well as reliability. I have installed many shower faucets where the homeowner decided to be cheap and bought a low end or no name type faucet. What a nightmare. Don't do it. All this person did was save $25, just to have a $470 repair bill only 6 months later. Moen Shower faucets and Delta shower faucets will both work fine. The delta faucet has a unique system now where you can buy the lower end faucet and later change out the guts and finish for a much higher end faucet and shower head a few years down the road if you like. Most of Moen's faucets have a lifetime guarantee, you still have to pay for the plumber to repair it, but the part is free.
If you are into diy tiles then simply cut the tiles up to the removable plate that comes with the rough-in part of the shower faucet. This way you know the faceplate will cover any holes in the shower tile.
If you are going to install more than one shower faucet, shower head or a shower faucet and body sprays then you will need to change the size of the shower drain. Most shower pans or shower bases have a hole that will fit a 2 inch shower drain, but get reduced to 1 ½ inches. If you are using more water then from just one faucet you must make sure this is a 2 inch drain. This is of course still the case if you are using a shower liner and tile.
Most of the shower plumbing jobs that I have done have come out to about $400 to install a faucet. This may be higher or lower then just repairing the faucet depending on what else is needed in the repair.
Thanks for reading and best of luck with your shower faucet.