Plumbing issues

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   Okay I had two plumbing issues this weekend. The first is that I sprung a leak in my hot water heater compartment. When I tracked it down the leak was coming from one of the bypass valves on the Hot Water Heater. As an emergency repair I remove the short piece of pex on either side of the  valve and replaced the whole section with a piece of braided water line. When I took a look at the valve body after I got it out it appears that the valve is held in the body only by friction. There must have been a little water int he valve last year after I winterized it and it froze and pushed the valve out of the body.  If I had known how to take the valve apart before I removed it I could have done the repair in place and not have had to replace pex pipe. So here are some pictures so others can learn from my mistakes.

The second problem I had was that the shower would not work. This I did not figure out. The shower comes on for about a 1/2 second and then pressure drops to a trickle. It does it on both the Hot and Cold so the issue has to be in the Faucet. I am thinking that there might be debris in the faucet behind the vacuum breaker and that the water pressure forces the debris into the vacuum breaker plugging the shower. Has anyone had an issue like this?