So, I bought this house a year ago or so, and I’ve had problems with low water pressure in the kitchen. Only the kitchen. If I turned on one of the taps, there’d be little more than a trickle of water, but if I turned on both, there’d be at least enough pressure to be marginally acceptable for washing dishes, etc. Water pressure everywhere else in the house is just fine.
I finally got around to trying to deal with this after talking to a friend of a friend who is a plumber. He said first thing to do would be to check the aerator, but if that wasn’t gunked up, then the problem was probably that the galvanized pipes in my 65 year old house were probably scaled up.
I checked the aerator, no problem there. So I called and made an appointment with a plumber for him to come out and check the situation. Well, despite this guy being highly recommended, he decided he could just troubleshoot this and give me an estimate during a phone call when I was waiting for him to show up. He quoted me $750 to replace the pipes leading to the kitchen.
Well, that was more than I expected, so I tried to mess around with things myself. I decided to turn off the cold water valve under the kitchen sink, disconnect the hose leading to the fixture, and restart the water so see if the fixture might be the problem. After grunting and groaning a bit, lo and behold, turns out that the cold water valve was just halfway open and the water flow, even through the faucet, is completely fixed!
So I tried the same thing with the hot water line. First I closed the shutoff valve all the way, then opened it up again, and… the problem got worse. Hot water flow went from more or less a trickle to a drip. I’ve tried working the valve a few times, but no love.
A couple things are puzzling me. I’m thinking perhaps that there’s something wrong with the valve, like my closing it got something seated down in there restricting the flow even further. However, it’s a new looking valve - still brassy and clean looking on the outside - so I just have a hard time thinking that the valve is defective.
Also, and I admit this could be my imagination, if I go to my basement, I can see the two galvanized pipes that lead to the kitchen. if I tap on the cold water pipe, it is clearly rings with a deeper, heavier tone than rapping on the hot water pipe, leading me to question if the problem with the flow in the hot water pipe is further back, and the whole fooling with the shutoff valve thing was just cooincidence.
Can anyone provide some advice on how to proceed here?