My bathroom faucet has developed a drip and I’m looking for a virtual second opinion. I’ll describe the symptoms: This faucet has separate cold and hot taps, like most bathroom sinks; in fact this sink is about as generic a Home Depot sink as you could possible get (don’t judge, it came with the place :D). When I turn on the cold water, everything works great, but when I turn it off, a thin stream of water will continue to flow out. This thin stream eventually slows to a drip, and usually eventually stops if you leave it alone long enough. The intensity of the dripping has varied over time: sometimes it just drips, sometimes it streams out for quite a while, sometimes it barely drips. This can be affected if I start wiggling around the handle a bit, though that usually just makes it worse. The hot water tap is completely fine.
Now I know next to nothing about plumbing, but my ignorant opinion is that something is “loose” and needs to be tightened. What that might be? I have no idea.
We had a plumber come out for another project (installing a new faucet in our kitchen sink) and asked him to take a look at it. He turned it on, watched it drip, then said that in his opinion the guts of the faucet were ruined and we needed to replace the whole faucet. My spidey sense turned on at that as it seems ridiculous to me: it’s just a little drip and he didn’t even really inspect it. But he was confident that this was a crappy Home Depot sink that could not be fixed.
Any thoughts from knowledgeable Dopers? Does this sound like something that could be fixed with a new watchamacallit or by tightening a thingamabob, or do you agree that I should just replace the whole thing?
Shut the water off.
Remove the knob by prying off the “C” to expose the screw. Remove screw and pull knob off.
Using a deep socket, remove the valve.
Remove screw and replace rubber washer.
Assemble in reverse order. Might also use Teflon tape on valve.
There are a million different kinds of these things, but Home Depot pretty much has what you’ll need.
Hopefully just a washer. If the faucet is old enough the seat may be corroded. Some of the washer kits come with a seat grinding tool so you can get it flat again, but if that’s case you could be better off replacing the whole faucet. Check underneath and see how the faucet is connected to the supply lines. If there are threaded flex hoses replacing the faucet can be pretty easy. And you should be looking for shut-off valves also so you can do any of these repairs.
Ah, yes, the seat. Remove that with a big old Allen wrench after removing the valve. Use a file or grinder to make it nice and flat on the end again.
My seats corrode and pit with such regularity its pretty near depressing. Three sinks, two showers and a tub in the house and I do this horrid little chore about once a year somewhere in the house.
I wonder if the seat being corroded was what the plumber was thinking about. But as non-handy as I am, these instructions sound simple enough that I could probably handle it. Thanks, everyone!
Repeated for truth! I was replacing the washer on a kitchen faucet years ago and, in my rush to get it done, forgot to shut off the water to the sink. I pulled the handle off and had just removed the valve when a literal geyser of water shot straight up in the air high enough to hit the ceiling. It was so cartoonishly funny that I stood there laughing - until I remembered that it was the hot water side and in mere seconds things under the geyser, myself included, were going to get uncomfortably warm. I dove under the sink and shut off the supply valve just in time to avoid scalding myself. It was one time I was thankful not to have a hot water recirculator.
The memory of the dripping kitchen drapes still makes me smile, though.
It’s a pretty simple repair. As other have described you can buy a kit with the washers and brass screws. Replace both. In fact, you might as well replace both hot and cold while you’re at it. If one’s worn out the other one is probably due as well.
Tip - Make sure that the stem is in the open position when you thread the cartridge back in and tighten it. This will prevent crushing the new washer.
My father had a tool designed for removing and replacing faucet seats. And they were cheap enough that we would just replace them rather than trying to grind them down.
Most modern faucets use ceramic valves rather than a stem valve with a rubber washer and brass seat. In that case you replace a cartridge. Popular models will be available at the hardware store. Some cheaper ceramic faucets may not have a replaceable cartridge, you just replace the faucet.
The stem is the part that the washer is mounted on. It is basically a big screw that pushes the washer against the seat. The seat gets damaged easily so you might as well replace it with the washer, it is just a small piece of brass and is cheap. Valve seat wrenches are cheap also and can be found with the washers and seats.
If it’s a cheap Home Depot special … it may use a “Peerless” style washer, if so you should replace the spring as well … how much is your time worth to you, how many trips to the hardware store, when does the $29.99 price of a new faucet become more economical?
Pro Tip #1 - Do both valves at the same time, it’s only the cold water today, but there’s good chance the hot water value is about to fail as well …
Pro Tip #2 - When you’re done with the work … remove the aerator, turn on the undersink valves and run the water (both sides) for a half a minute, then replace the aerator … scale and crud tend to build up on the inside of your water lines and around these undersink valves … closing and opening them breaks some of this free and will clog the aerator … so flush the lines a bit without the aerator and save yourself yet another trip to the hardware store …