Faucet Repair

The drip map:

• Drips from the spout, valve closed. The sealing surfaces have retired: cartridge, ceramic disc, or the seats and springs beneath. The classic faucet failure, and the most satisfying to fix.
• Leak around the base or handle. O-rings and body seals letting pressurized water climb where it should not. It shows as a ring of water at the deck or weeping at the handle when running.
• Wet cabinet below. Supply connectors, stop valves or the sprayer hose. Under-sink leaks are the fixture's plumbing rather than its mechanism, and the ones that damage cabinets while nobody looks.
• Weak or spitting flow. One faucet weakening usually means a clogged aerator or blocked cartridge inlet: mineral debris, not pressure loss. The sputtering faucet after utility work is aerator grit almost every time.
• Temperature and handle complaints. Stiff rotation, a handle that flops, water that will not mix hot and cold properly. This is mechanism wear inside the cartridge, all serviceable.

This page covers repairing faucets of every room and mechanism. One weak faucet is a fixture problem and belongs here; weak water everywhere is a system problem and belongs to the pressure pages. The distinction takes one walk around the house and saves a wrong service call.

What actually wears out:

• Cartridges, discs and seats. The moving heart of the faucet, cycled thousands of times a year. Wear here produces drips, stiffness and mixing problems, and replacement restores the faucet to itself.
• O-rings and body seals. Rubber aging in hot, mineral-rich service: cheap parts whose failure imitates expensive ones.
• Mineral buildup. Hard water plating the aerator, the cartridge ports and the sprayer: flow complaints with a cleaning solution, and a hint toward the water-quality pages when it keeps returning.
• Hoses, connectors and stops. The pull-down hose that finally cracks, the braided line past its years, the stop valve that seeps: the fixture's supporting cast, replaced on evidence.
• Pressure abuse. A house running high pressure eats faucet seals across every room. Serial fixture failures are a system symptom, cross-referenced to the pressure pages rather than blamed on brands.

The bench sequence, in order:

• Name the valve architecture. Cartridge, ceramic disc, ball or compression: the mechanism family decides which parts exist and which repair path applies, so identification comes before anything is opened or ordered.
• Isolate the path, not the puddle. Every surface gets dried, then one side runs at a time while the first bead is watched for: spout tip, deck plate, handle skirt or the underside. Water travels; the test pins where it starts rather than where it collects.
• Split the flow. Run with the aerator removed, then each temperature alone, then confirm the stops under the sink are fully open. Each comparison removes one suspect: screen debris, a blocked cartridge inlet, or a half-closed stop pretending to be a worn faucet.
• Open and read the mechanism. The cartridge comes out for inspection (scored surfaces, flattened springs, crusted ports), and the seats below get checked while the body is open. The verdict is formed on what the parts show, matched to maker and model.
• Where repair ends. A body corroded through, a seat too worn to dress true, or a cartridge platform no manufacturer still supports means the faucet itself is the finding, and the conversation moves to the installation page rather than another part.

• Faucets