mitch kramez

behold. we have water pressure

// February 7th, 2005 // general

since we moved in, i’ve been less than impressed with the water pressure at our kitchen sink. so needless to say that on sunday when the faucet began leaking like a sieve i squealed with joy at the possibility of a new faucet… could this old piece of junk be stealing all of my water pressure?

we decided we’d get a new faucet today. so when i got home i began dismantling the old one. i slowly began to see that the faucet had been leaking slowly for a while. the clamp threading (that holds the faucet down on the sink) was beautiful mix of green and rust colors with the threads nicely mashed together in many areas… not what you want to see when you have about 4″ of clearance to move a wrench around in there.

i decided to just take most of the faucet apart from the top and then disconnect the water lines beneath. once heather got home i had her hold the top with a wrench while i tried to loosen it up… finally it budged. but that’s about it. i’m guess we hit some of the mashed threads i was talking about earlier. we decided it might be easier to ditch this plan and have me hold the nut steady below while heather turned the rest of the mechanism above… she’s tuff stuff you know. we turned it around for awhile that way, but then it just got to be too much for both of us. heather’s baby muscles were tired and my hands couldn’t hold those pliers together any more.

then, genius struck. i do have a sawzall. i told heather to pull up what she could of the remaining thread of the old faucet. perfect… about an inch above the sink… plenty of room to fit the sawzall in there. so i slapped in the blade and the battery, fired it up and 10 seconds later the faucet was in half. sweet. the tools paid for themselves already… corroded faucets are a bitch, and this made quick work of it.

so after reading some reviews, and deciding exactly how much we wanted to spend on a faucet, (which isn’t much by the way, there is a limit to how much i’ll pay for something that just looks pretty), we settled on a pegasus brand faucet. by far the heaviest of the faucets we looked at at home depot, and perhaps the best value. $100! After some giftcards it was a little cheaper, but a great deal over all i think.

so a simple install, and a roll of teflon tape later, the water lines are connected… we’re ready for at test. “heather, fire it up”, i said. she turns it on… she’s pretty excited… i’m not. the water pressure is so low that the sprayer won’t stay on. damn i think. it’s something more than just the faucet. so i have this sick feeling in my stomach that some pipes are horribly corroded in the basement, and i’m dreading finding it and replacing it. it’d be one thing if i was just replacing it all. but i’m not about to hunt and peck for problem areas and patching things up.

so after a little bit of thinking, i start to wonder if the faucet doesn’t have a water save in it. i hate water savers, just ask me sometime… i’ll tell you. so i unscrew the sprayer head (btw, this is a pullout style faucet… really… no joke.) and look in the inlet… and sure enough there’s a damn water saver. i pull it out screw the spray head back on… and hot damn… talk about water pressure.

don’t worry, demonstrations are free when you stop over anytime this week or weekend. talk to you all later!