Repairing a One Handle Kitchen Faucet
This is a very easy repair and only takes a few minutes. You first need to do two things before you start, and these are important. You need to shut off the water to the faucet all the way, either under the sink or like mine, at the main for the house. Then you should put a rag or towel in the sink to cover the drain and prevent stuff from falling in the drain. This is not a good way to loose parts down the drain.
Then you need to have a repair kit for the job, since your not sure what you’ll need get the kit that has the washers, springs, and little tool, if you want you can get the full kit and save a trip to the store later, that is a good idea. The full kit will have the ball stem and all the other parts. It is a good idea to just get the whole kit and have them on hand for any later jobs if you don’t use them right away. With the kit you should get a tool that has an allen wrench and a key for the plastic disc inside the cap assembly.
Loosen the allen screw that holds the handle on the faucet. When it’s loose enough the handle will pull off. There is a plastic disc inside the silver ring. Loosen this ring with the tool that comes in the repair kit. You don’t have to remove it completely, just a few turns till it spins freely. Then loosen the metal cap. Turning counter clockwise with a channel lock pliers you should be able to do it with out ruining the ring. The plastic disc was holding pressure on the ring and it should be loose.
Then inside is a plastic ring that the stem comes up through, this has an odd egg shaped hole in it. Pull up on the stem and these two pieces should come out. You should have the stem out and the plastic ring, this ring has a rubber gasket on the inside of it.
Inside the faucet there is two small rubber gaskets and a third hole that is in the center above the two on each side. The left is the hot water inlet and the right is the cold water inlet, the center is the outlet for both to the faucet spout. Both gaskets should be replaced and the springs for them. Replace them with the ones that come in the repair kit. Just make sure you take them out and put them in the same way, it’s not hard to follow the example on the repair kits instructions or use the one you have not taken out by doing them one at a time. Use tweezers to remove and replace them. Make sure they are seated in the inside by pushing on them with a finger until they go all the way into there hole.
Check the two gaskets that are on the faucet spout by pulling up on the spout when you have the other parts off the faucet. If you had leakage around the base off the faucet and around the base of the spout this is one of or both of the two gaskets in the spout between the spout and faucet body. Replace them by pulling off the old ones and replacing them with the two new ones.
You should now look at the stem ball and if it is dented up replace it, just use the replacement from the repair kit. Replace the other o rings that come in the kit as you assemble the faucet, using the kit instructions as a guide. The ball stem goes back with the slot hole on the small pin inside the faucet body. The two holes will line up with the two gaskets and the center hole will line up with the center hole inside the faucet.
Once the stem is back put the plastic and rubber gaskets back on top of it using the new rubber gaskets, the kit should come with new ones. Place the metal ring back on and screw it down till it’s snug, then screw down the plastic ring till it’s snug. When you get the rest back together and if it leaks some, these are the two things that will have to be tightened, first try the plastic ring, and if that does not get rid of the leak, try tightening the metal collar some, carefully, and then the plastic ring some more.
You can turn the water back on when the metal and plastic ring are on and before you put the handle back on in case you need to tighten the rings for leakage, this way it saves you a trip to the basement if that is how you turned off the water. Once the faucet is back together you should have all the old parts, through them. Keep any unused parts and the allen key to use later, put in a zip lock bag and in a drawer where you keep such parts.
If there is a lot of leakage somewhere, shut off the water and take everything apart, looking for something that did not go together properly, this happens and you just need to fix it.
Repairing a faucet is quite easy and only takes a few minutes, I recommend you buy the full repair kit unless you already have some of it from before. This will save you a trip to the store for more parts.
For other types of kitchen faucets, you can consult the repair kit you can get from the hardware store. These types are pretty easy to figure out and the kits cost pretty low compared to calling in a plumber. The internet also has other sites that have repairs for your particular faucet, just search the name of your faucet and type, single lever or two handles, or whatever.
