What our plumbers find behind a dripping spout, a leaking sprayer and a puddle under the sink, from Mukilteo to Whidbey Island
A kitchen faucet fails in a handful of predictable ways, and most of them are repairs, not replacements. A drip at the spout is a cartridge or a stem, a leak at the base is an O-ring, a sprayer that misbehaves is its head or its hose, and a puddle under the sink is usually a connection rather than the faucet itself.
My kitchen faucet drips from the spout. Which part needs replacing?
On a single-handle faucet the drip is the cartridge; on a two-handle faucet it is the stems or the seats under them. The brand and series tell us the part. We carry the common Moen and Delta cartridges, and when a faucet takes something rarer we measure, order it and finish on a second visit.
A Langley kitchen went that way this summer: Willie and Logan found a Delta faucet that needed a cartridge we do not stock, ordered it, and had it working as designed on the return visit.
Water is coming out around the base of the spout. Is that serious?
Sometimes. A little water at the base when the faucet runs is usually the O-rings on the spout body, a quick repair on a sound faucet. Water that keeps coming with the faucet off, or that shows up inside the cabinet, means the body itself has failed, and that is a replacement.
Logan and Willie saw the second kind in a Harbour Pointe kitchen in May: the body had let go and flooded the cabinet, and a Moen Arbor pull-down from the truck replaced it.
My pull-down sprayer leaks or will not switch back to a stream. Do I need a new faucet?
Usually not. The spray head and the hose are separate parts on almost every pull-down faucet, and both can be replaced without touching the body. A head that drips or sticks in one mode needs its O-ring or the head itself; a hose that leaks into the cabinet is replaced as a unit.
In south Everett, Logan and Willie cured a leaking Grohe spray head with a new O-ring; in Mukilteo, Logan kept a faucet whose Franke pull-out hose had failed at its crimp and fitted the brand’s own hose.
Why does only my kitchen faucet have low flow when the rest of the house is fine?
Because the restriction is in the faucet or just below it. The aerator screen, the inline screen in a pull-down hose, an angle stop that is half closed, a kinked supply line or a worn cartridge will all starve one faucet while every other fixture runs normally.
We start at the aerator, which catches whatever a water-main repair or a new water heater shakes loose. Weak flow everywhere is a different question, and our water pressure page covers it.
The handle has gotten stiff and hard to turn. Is that scale from hard water?
Not around here. Everett’s water from Spada Lake and Seattle’s from the Cedar and Tolt are both soft, so mineral scale rarely seizes a faucet in Snohomish County. A stiff handle is almost always a cartridge whose O-rings have dried and hardened, sometimes with grit behind them, and a new cartridge cures it.
A Mountlake Terrace bathroom faucet that dripped and had grown stiff went exactly that way: Logan and Willie identified the Moen cartridge it took, ordered it and installed it on the return visit.
Can the manufacturer’s lifetime warranty get me the cartridge for free?
Often, yes. Moen, Delta and Kohler sell most of their faucets with a limited lifetime warranty to the original owner, and a worn cartridge is usually covered. The trade-off is time: the part ships to you in days or weeks. We fit what the manufacturer sends, or bring our own part and get you back in service today.
When two Kohler bathroom faucets in a Mukilteo house were leaking last winter, Connor and Logan special-ordered the cartridges and installed the pair on the return visit.
I bought a new kitchen faucet. Will it fit my sink and the space above it?
Check three things before it goes in: the number of holes in the sink or counter, the clearance above the faucet, and the shutoff valves below it. A single-hole faucet covers a three-hole sink with a deck plate, but nothing fixes a handle that hits a shelf, and old stops that will not close get replaced at the same time.
In August a Mukilteo kitchen had a shelf less than a foot above the sink, so the faucet the homeowner wanted could not open its handle; Chase sourced a low-profile Moen pull-out that fit.
There is water under my kitchen sink but the faucet does not drip. Where is it coming from?
Almost always one of five places: the sprayer hose, the supply-line connections at the stops or the faucet, the faucet body itself, the basket strainer under the sink, or the dishwasher drain line. Dry everything, run each one in turn, and the leak shows itself. A body leak means a new faucet; the rest are parts.
That is how the Harbour Pointe flood was traced to the faucet body and the Mukilteo cabinet leak to the sprayer hose. When the body is the leak we usually have a replacement on the truck.
A Faucet That Drips, Sticks or Leaks
Call the Mukilteo office and tell us the brand on the faucet if you can find it. We can usually tell you whether it is a cartridge, a hose or a new faucet before we arrive. Related: faucet repair and replacement · a Moen shower cartridge replacement in Everett · water pressure and PRVs · garbage disposal questions · plumbing in Mukilteo · plumbing in Everett