Service

Faucet Repair and Replacement for Kitchens and Baths

Cartridge rebuilds, valve and angle stop replacement, and full faucet installation for kitchens and baths.

What this covers

Faucet Repair in South Florida

A dripping faucet is the plumbing failure people learn to live with, which is why it is so often the one that does damage. The drip itself is water going where it is meant to go. The failure that matters is behind the cabinet door: a supply riser weeping at the angle stop, a cracked shank nut, or a spray hose connection that lets go while nobody is home and empties into the cabinet base and the floor underneath it.

Almost every faucet fault is one of a small number of parts. A drip from the spout outlet is the cartridge, the ceramic disc or the seats and springs, depending on how that valve is built. A drip from the base of the spout is the O-rings inside the body. Weak flow at one fixture is the aerator or, on a pull-down kitchen faucet, the spray head. Weak flow at every fixture is not a faucet problem at all. Water in the cabinet is a connection, and which connection depends on when it appears.

What decides repair from replacement comes down to two things: whether the cartridge or seat kit for that valve body is still in production, and what the mounting shanks and supply connections look like once you are underneath. A brand-name faucet with parts still available is usually a rebuild. A builder-grade unit with a seized shank nut, corroded shanks and a discontinued cartridge is usually a replacement. Being told which one you have before parts are ordered is the point of the first look.

Before we arrive

Do these while the truck is on the way

Close the two stops under the sinkOne hot and one cold, on the wall behind the trap, clockwise until they stop, turned by hand. If a stop spins without closing or weeps from its stem, do not put a wrench on it — an old stop that shears leaves you with an open supply line and no way to close it. Shut the water off at the building instead, at the house valve near the meter or the unit valve in a condominium, and leave the fixture alone.
Empty the cabinet and dry it completelyEverything out, then dry the cabinet floor and lay down a sheet of paper or a dry towel. Where it wets first is a genuine diagnostic clue, and it is frequently not the place the water was pooling. A cabinet base that has already swollen and delaminated tells you this has been going on much longer than the puddle suggests.
Photograph the faucet and find the makeA photo of the faucet from above, another of the underside of the sink, and any brand name on the handle, the spout base or the escutcheon plate. That is what decides which rebuild parts come on the truck. Without it, a repair that could have been one visit becomes two.
Take the aerator off if the complaint is flowUnscrew the tip of the spout by hand, or with pliers wrapped in tape, rinse the screen and run the faucet without it. If the flow comes back, you have your answer. If it does not, the restriction is behind the valve. Do not force a corroded aerator: if it will not turn with taped pliers and steady pressure, stop, because snapping it off inside the spout ends the repair and starts a replacement.
Stop using it, and do not overtighten anythingA handle forced harder against a worn seat cuts that seat further and makes the rebuild less likely to hold. A shank nut torqued onto a corroded plastic thread cracks it. If the faucet is dripping, close the stops and leave it. If a stop is the source, put a container under it and keep the cabinet dry until someone gets there.

What people call about

The situations this service is for

It drips from the spout no matter how hard I close it
Water seeps out around the base of the spout when it runs
The cabinet floor is wet, or has swollen and delaminated
Barely any pressure at one tap while the rest of the house is fine
The pull-down spray head will not retract, or sprays sideways
The handle turns loosely, stiffly, or all the way round
The shut-off valve under the sink will not close

How the work runs

What is actually done, in order

Identify the valve before touching it: Faucets are not generic. Compression, ball, ceramic disc and cartridge valves come apart differently and fail differently, and the make and model stamped on the body or the trim decides which parts fit. That identification happens first, because pulling a cartridge with no replacement on hand leaves you with a fixture that has no water at all.
Isolate the fixture and prove it holds: Both angle stops closed, the faucet opened to drop the pressure, a pan and towels in the cabinet. Stops in South Florida homes are frequently original and scaled; if one will not seat or starts weeping from the stem, it is replaced as part of the work rather than nursed, because a fixture you cannot isolate is a fixture nobody can service safely.
Rebuild the valve properly: Handle and trim off, retaining clip or bonnet nut out, cartridge drawn with a puller where it has scaled into the body, seats and spring cups replaced on a ball valve, body O-rings replaced, and the bore cleaned of the mineral deposit that caused the failure in the first place. Silicone grease on reassembly, never petroleum, which swells the seals it touches.
Restore the whole flow path: The aerator comes out and is cleaned or replaced, the spray head and hose are checked, and the supply risers are inspected. On a fixture that has lost flow, what is caught in the aerator screen usually says where it came from — grit off a water heater, scale carried down a line, or plastic shavings from recent work upstream that will show up at the next fixture too.
Renew the connections underneath: Braided stainless supply lines rather than reused risers, new shank nuts and gaskets, a properly bedded deck seal, and the faucet drawn down square so the base does not rock on the deck. Hardened supply tubes and old compression sleeves are not put back; they are the parts that fail quietly, long after anyone remembers the visit.
Pressurize it and watch it: The stops are opened slowly, the faucet is run hot and cold, both handles are cycled through their full travel, and every joint is dried and then watched under pressure rather than glanced at. The cabinet floor is dried and left dry so any future drip has a clean surface to show itself on, and you are shown the parts that came out.

Planning

What South Florida changes about this job

Two things wear faucets out here faster than the fixtures are designed around. The first is the water: South Florida draws from a limestone aquifer, and what reaches the tap carries enough mineral content to build deposit inside a valve body and across a ceramic disc — the same deposit that seizes a cartridge into its bore, closes an aerator screen and leaves an angle stop that will not turn. The second is salt air. On the beach side of Hollywood, Pompano Beach and the barrier-island streets, humid salt-laden air works on chrome and brass in a cabinet that never fully dries, so shank nuts, tailpieces and supply connections often give out before the valve itself does. In a tower the same failed stop is not only a fixture problem, because a stop that will not hold sends the work back to a riser the building controls.

Parts availability decides more faucet jobs than condition does. Cartridges and seat kits for the major brands are commonly stocked; discontinued or import-only valve bodies may have no rebuild kit in existence, which forces a replacement regardless of how sound the rest of the faucet is.
Sink material and mounting change the work entirely. A deck-mounted faucet on a stone top with a shallow, crowded underside, a wall-mounted faucet set in tile, and a single-hole faucet replacing a widespread set that leaves two open holes are three different jobs arriving as the same request.
Angle stops are the hidden variable. Original multi-turn stops decades old often will not close, or will not reseal once they have been moved, and replacing one means shutting water down further back than the fixture.
In a condominium, a stop that cannot be made to hold sends the work back to the riser, and the riser belongs to the building — which means association notice and a scheduled window before a tap can be touched. That is a scheduling constraint rather than a plumbing one, and it is better established at booking than discovered on site.
A homeowner-supplied faucet is fine, but what is in the carton matters. Some ship without supply lines, some without a deck plate, some with a drain assembly that does not match the sink. Opening the box beforehand and checking the hole count and spacing on your sink prevents a job stopping halfway.

Questions

Faucet Repair — straight answers

Is it worth repairing a faucet, or should I replace it?

It comes down to parts and to what is underneath. If the make is identifiable and the cartridge or seat kit for that valve is still in production, a rebuild restores it properly. If the valve body is corroded, if the cartridge has scaled into its bore and breaks on removal, or if the mounting nuts have to be cut off the shanks, replacement is the better route. That judgment is made with the trim off and the cabinet open, not by looking at the spout from above.

Why does it still drip after a new washer or cartridge?

Three usual reasons. The replacement part is a near-match rather than the correct one for that valve body. The seat the new part closes against is pitted or scaled, so a good cartridge is landing on a damaged surface. Or the drip is not from the valve at all — water tracking down the inside of the spout from failed body O-rings looks identical from above. Cleaning the bore, replacing the seats where the valve has them, and confirming the make usually settles it.

Only one faucet has weak flow. What causes that?

At a single fixture it is nearly always the aerator, the spray head, or the supply stop. Aerator screens catch scale and grit and close up gradually. Pull-down spray heads clog at the outlet and at the diverter. A partly closed or partly seized angle stop restricts one side only, which shows up as a fixture that runs weak on hot but not cold, or the reverse. If every fixture in the property is weak, the cause is upstream and it is a different investigation.

There is water under the sink but the faucet looks dry. Where is it from?

Dry everything, lay down paper, then test one thing at a time: run hot, run cold, then fill and drain the bowl. Each points somewhere different. Wet during hot only points at the hot riser or shank. Wet only as the bowl drains points at the strainer, tailpiece or trap rather than the faucet. Wet with nothing running at all points at an angle stop weeping from its stem or packing nut, which is the leak people most often miss.

The shut-off valve under my sink will not close. Is that part of the job?

It should be. A fixture that cannot be isolated cannot be serviced, and a stop that spins without sealing is a failure waiting for the worst possible moment. Replacing it means shutting the water down further back — the building shut-off in a house, or in some condominiums the riser, which needs association scheduling. Establish that when the appointment is booked, because it changes how long the water is off and who has to be told.

Can you install a faucet I bought myself?

Yes. Open the box before the visit and check what is in it: some faucets ship without supply lines, some without a deck plate for a three-hole sink, and some include a drain assembly that does not fit the sink you own. Check the hole count and spacing on your sink and the clearance in the cabinet as well. Mismatched hardware is the single most common reason a straightforward installation stops halfway through.

What changes the cost of a faucet job?

Four things, roughly in order of impact. Whether a rebuild kit exists for that valve or the body has to be replaced outright. Whether the angle stops still close and reseal, because a failed stop moves the work back into the supply piping. What the underside of the sink is like — a deep undermount bowl on a stone top sharing the cabinet with a disposal and a filter is slower to work in than an open cabinet. And whether the shank nuts and supply tubes come apart or have to be cut off. The faucet sitting on the counter is rarely what decides it.

The pull-down spray head will not retract. Can that be fixed?

Usually the hose, not the head. A pull-down hose runs down through the spout and carries a weight that pulls it back; if the weight has slid, was fitted at the wrong point, or the hose has caught on the disposal body, a water filter or a supply loop, the head stops docking. The other causes are a worn docking collar or a weak magnet, and a head that has scaled at the outlet so the spray pattern goes sideways. Clearing the cabinet and rerouting the hose fixes more of these than parts do.

What is the white crust around my faucet and spray head?

Mineral scale left behind by hard water. On the outside it is cosmetic. Inside the valve it is not: it is what makes cartridges seize, aerators close up, ceramic discs fail to seat and angle stops stop turning. It is also why a faucet left dripping gets harder to repair the longer it drips — the flow across the seat carries deposit and cuts the sealing surface at the same time.

The faucet sputters or spits when I turn it on. What is that?

Air, or something breaking loose upstream. A faucet that spits when it opens and then settles usually has air in the line, which is normal after the water has been off and clears once every fixture has been run. If it keeps doing it, the aerator screen is partly blocked, or the cartridge is passing air past a worn seal. Sputtering on the hot side alone points at the water heater rather than the faucet. If it started right after work was done anywhere in the building, expect debris in the aerators throughout.