How To Fix A Leaky Faucet?

Does your faucet still drip after you shut off the handle?

In most cases this is an easy fix and most DIY adventures can do this themselves. If your faucet is corroded and has hard water or corrosion marks on it, it might be time for a new faucet. I would also recommend you call a professional as it might be a bit of a challenge to get the old faucet off.

Do you have a constant drip from your bathroom or kitchen faucet?

Leaks like this can occur from a few different parts in your faucet. Once a leak starts it is very unlikely that it will resolve itself and the longer you let it go, the higher the chances are that you will turn a $200 repair into a $2000 repair.

Replacing O rings or cartridges on a bathroom faucet to stop the drip.

Your bathroom faucet has 2 cartridges, each controls the flow of hot or cold water. This part basically connects a hose from the bottom and lets the water out through a small window. When you turn the handle you’re tuning the window, the bigger the window the more flow, simply put. Around all these parts are rubber seals. Holding the cartridge in place is a packing nut.

First remove the handle by loosening the set screw, then loosen the packing nut. Now you should be able to pull out the cartridge, at this point you can see all of the O rings, there is also a seal inside that the cartridge sits on, you’re going to want to change that as well, use a needle nose to get it out.

It might be smarter to replace the entire cartridge if it is available at Home Depot of any other local plumbing supply parts company. The new cartridge will come with all new seals.

Once you are done, put back the cartridge and secure it with the packing nut, you don’t want to over tighten the nut, use your hand and a crescent wrench for the last turn and a half.

Replacing Delta bathroom faucets with new Glacier Bay faucets.

Recently we were at a customer that has Delta Faucets, these faucets are nice and cost around $200 a piece. In the past we changed the cartridges to fix drip leaks but this time, one of the faucets was so corroded that we had to drill a hole in the handle to get it off. At this point, fixing the faucet is almost the same cost as replacing with new Glacier Bay faucets.

Glacier Bay is owned by Home Depot, they have all types of product including plumbing fixtures. The advantages are price, product availability and most important parts. The new faucets coast $55 each and to install only took 1.5 hours.

Here is a short video about the installation.