It’s oddly painful to hear the drip of a leaking faucet. The sound can drive anyone insane, but your water bills hurt your wallet the most when excess water leaks out of your faucet. You have the option to pay a plumber to fix all your needs! In the case that you can’t afford a plumber or you want to learn to do it yourself, we’ve brought you a guide on fixing one of the most common faucet types. We’ll be covering the others in later articles!
BEGINNING
1. Turn off the water pipe that leads to your leaking faucet.
You should look under your sink to find the handles, which are often along the pipes, to shut off the water. The next step is to twist them clockwise until they’re nicely tight.
2. Remember to plug your drain.
If you have a plug or a rage, remember to use it on your drain. There is nothing more frustrating than having a screw, washer, or small item slip from your hand and fall down into those slimy depths.
3. Figure out what type of faucet you have.
- You’ll know the compression faucet easiest because it has two handles: one that turns on the hot water and one that turns on the cold water.
If you don’t have a compression faucet, your sink has one handle that switches the water from hot to cold. If you can’t google the answer, this means an extra step where you have to take your faucet apart to understand what inner mechanism it’s using.
- A ball faucet uses a ball bearing
- There will be a ceramic cylinder in a ceramic-disk faucet.
- Like its name, the cartridge faucet has a cartridge. You might sport this faucet beforehand because they tend to come with decorative caps.
COMPRESSION FAUCET
- Take off each handle
- You’ll have to remove the nut. The stem is on the O-ring, and the O-ring is on the seat washer. When you find the seat washer, check if the rubber is worn. This is generally why someone would have a leaky faucet.
- You can pull out the stem to get at the seat washer. The seat washer uses an upside down-brass screw to hold it in the stem. Make sure to bring the old one to the store to compare its size. You need to coat it in plumber’s grease
- If your handles leak, the object you need to replace is the O-ring.
- You should be able to reassemble the handles now! You’ve fixed the minor leak.
