Repairing Bath and Kitchen Faucets

Hi! I’m Bob Schmidt with Home Remodel Workshop. So you had a little bit of plumbing work done in your house, or you did a little plumbing work over your own in your house. You go upstairs to that bathroom faucet or that kitchen faucet, you turn it on and find out it has very low flow, and uneven flow of water coming out of it. Generally, there’s a real simple fix for that, I’ll show you how to take care of it. Let’s get to work. Typical faucets, be it bath or kitchen, have aerators. That’s this little thing here on the bottom. It has two functions. One function is it has screens in here that filter out particulates that should get into your water supply system either from outside or from inside your house. The second thing it does is it allows air to mix with water, reducing the amount of water that you have to use and water treatment that you have to pay for on your water bill. You want to keep this in, it gives you a nice, even flow water. And all likelihood, this is plugged up with particulates and needs to be cleaned. Just take your hand and unscrew this. Before you take anything apart, always make sure that that trap is closed. There are a lot of small parts in here, and if anything should happen to fall loose, you don’ want to lose it down the drain. Now if you’re lucky, and your faucets fairly new, generally speaking these are put on hand tight. So if you just grab them in between your finger, your first finger and your thumb, and you gently turn it off. Now you don’t want to do this real quick because you don’t want it to fall off into your hand and parts to go flying everywhere. Get it to the point where it just clears, and then drop it away. Take you finger or take a look up in here and make sure that there’s no other parts left up in here that could possibly be part of the aerator. Your aerators on there are real tight, and you just cannot take your fingers and turn it off. Because there’s a nice finish on this, you don’t want to damage this, it does show. What you can do is take a pair of pliers or channel locks. Now you don’t want to put the metal right onto the finish. You wrap it with either dock tape or electrical tape first, making sure that all the metals covered and it’s padded. And you only press it down, and use as much pressure as it takes to get it started. You don’t want to crash the aerator or damage the threads. As you can see, in this aerator, the screen has picked up several particulates over a period of time, which has disrupted the flow of the water and lessen the pressure. What I like to do is I like to come to an area where I have a nice flat surface to work so I can take this apart and clean it. Not all aerators are the same. This one here is basically a one piece model, where all I need to do is push the center of it up, take this, set it down aside and basically, this is all one piece, the screen, the washer, and it’s all put together. Now, they’re not all like this. So, be very careful when you’re taking it apart to make sure that you keep the order in line of the way you’re going to put it back together. Clean the aerator, what you’re going to need is an old toothbrush, a needle or a pin, and a bowl with a little bit of water in it. What I’d like to do is take the aerator, put it into the water, soak it up a little bit, wet up my toothbrush, and just start cleaning away at that debris that’s on that screen. And you know this may take a couple of minutes, and there could be some hard water build up on here. I’ve heard some people say that it’s not a bad idea to soak this in vinegar a little bit, I’ve never had to do that, for the most part of what I want, this does the job. As soon as that screen, that little screen there, looks nice and clean, which looks pretty close. Then the next thing I want to look at is I want to look at these holes. They’re several of them in the bottom, and there’s a few here on the side. What I’d like to do is I take this needle, and very carefully, I’m jobbing in there like crazy, just make sure that all these little orifices that allow the air to mix with the water are clean, which we’ll make sure it gives me a nice, even flow water after I put it back together. After you get the screen and all the orifice holes all cleaned out, so it’s real nice and ready to go. Simply bring it up upstairs. Now don’t be in a big hurry to get this thing started, play with it a little bit. Make sure it’s threaded right. You don’t want to cross-thread it. Generally speaking, all you have to do is turn it on with your thumb and first finger until it’s hand-tight. Soon as it’s hand-tight, open up your drain, and it gives you a nice, even flow water, and your pressure’s back. If I had disrupted flow, and poor water pressure with my water, this would be among the first things I would check. Generally speaking, this is the most common problem. It’s easy to fix, you can get it done in 5-10 minutes and have a nice clean running water. If this isn’t the case, and someone has done work in your house, you may want to check and make sure that your water valve is open all the way. Either to your house or to the faucet make sure that this is only to the one faucet that you’re having a problem with and not your entire house. Usually the simple fixes are the best. I hope this took care of your problem, I’m Bob Schmidt of Home Remodel Workshop. Please check out our home channel for many other videos we have. Thanks!