A shower hose that weeps is usually the nut
I had a drip from the handset every time I hung it up after a shower in March. A bead ran down the hose and spotted the tray. I thought the hose had split. I undid the nut at the handset. The little conical washer was flat on one side and the nut had been cross-threaded a quarter turn last time someone put it back. The hose was sound. The nut was not sitting on the washer.
A shower hose is a tube with a nut at each end. Each nut holds a washer, often a cone, onto the handset or the mixer outlet. When the nut is square and the washer is there, it seals. When the washer is missing, nicked, or the nut is on the thread crooked, it weeps. People buy a new hose. They keep the old washer. The new hose weeps in the same place.
Hose fittings leak at the washer, not the hose is the garden version. Same disc, wetter room. A tap that drips is usually the washer in the head is the spout, not this nut. A bottle trap that weeps is usually the washer is the waste under the basin. I isolate if I can. A shower that has an isolation I can reach gets shut and tested. If I cannot isolate, I stop, or I only undo the handset end with the mixer off and no one about to turn it on. I do not replace a mixer for a nut. If the thread is stripped, I stop.
When I check I undo one nut at a time. I look in the nut for the washer. I look at the tail of the handset for a bitten thread. I put a new cone in the right way up, the taper where it wants to sit, and I start the nut by hand. If it will not run on smoothly, I am cross-threading. I back off. I tighten until it meets, not until the chrome rings. I run the shower and I hold a dry tissue on the nut. A bead is still the washer or the seat. I do not crank it again until the thread goes.
Skip a new hose with no spare washers. Skip PTFE on a cone. The cone has to sit. Skip grips on a thin chrome nut until you have ovalled it. A cloth and a gentle spanner if it is stuck, then stop if it will not come. Skip leaving the washer on the tray where it goes down the waste. I put it in a cup. Skip a mixer swap because the outlet wept. That is the nut.
Limescale on the cone face is a drip you will put back. I wipe the faces. I do not scrape the chrome with a knife until I have a leak I made. If the handset tail is chewed, a new washer will not save it. That is the stripped-thread stop.
This shows as a drip after every shower, or as a crust of scale on the nut you never look at. Winter, the tray stays wet and you notice late. I now feel the nut when I hang the handset. Cold and dry is fine. A fresh bead is the washer.
I do not need a new shower because the hose wept. I need the nut square, a cone that seats, and a stop if the thread has gone.
If I later add a buy link here, it will be a paid promo.