I took the head off, but I didn’t see one of those little plastic things. I couldn’t get down inside the head to where the water comes out. The head is one big piece and there isn’t any way to take it apart.
That is the head and the head is connected to a hose. You tug the head down, the hose extends. You can take the head OFF the hose, but I don’t see a way to take apart the head any further. The head had a little metal thing INSIDE the hose (looked like a tiny colander) and it had a rubber washer thing, too. It wasn’t dirty, but I washed it anyhow.
Here is the thing.
With the head OFF, the water still comes out pretty slow. So I don’t think that doodad was a restrictor (or if it is a restrictor, it’s not the only restrictor). There might actually be a restrictor, but if so, it is restricting further upstream. I will have to crawl under the sink and test this theory by unhooking the supply and letting it spray into a bucket. If it comes out a like a FORCEFUL horse pee, then we will know a thing. If it is more like an old man DRIBBLING, then we will know some other thing.
I took that thing out but it doesn’t seem to be noticeably different flow. Maybe I’ve got multiple things going on here.
Humm…
UPDATE: Actually that little thing I took out is necessary to keep the head from leaking, especially if you use the button to stop the flow. It was a rubber donut looking thing with a screen. I took the screen out, but put the little rubber doo-dad (and a little washer thing) back inside. It really hasn’t increased the flow that I can tell. But it doesn’t leak and now there is no screen in there to inhibit flow. I will still have to go under the sink but maybe later this afternoon or tomorrow.
Tonight I took off the hose under the sink and I have excellent flow. I nice robust stream. But up top, not so good. And it’s getting worse. When I first installed, pressure was pretty good, about the same as it always had been. But then it got worse and I made this thread and started thinking about. That was at the start of the month. Sometime today it got MUCH worse and now it’s just sort of dribbling out. I have no idea, except that it MUST be in the faucet somehow.
Probably something upstream has gotten caught in the facet? Probably it happened twice? Maybe at the start of the month when I first noticed the lower pressure and then again today. This is what I’m thinking. I have no idea what else it could be, but I wonder if anyone has thoughts?
I think the only thing to do is to yank the existing (new) faucet and get another. Sheesh.
I am hoping I can do it all myself because I just spent a small fortune on the laundry line which started backing up. Dang, I should have been a plumber!
If sediment from the supply line got caught inside the faucet, but before the aerator, you can back-flush it. Turn off both water lines. Disconnect one end from the supply line and aim it into a bucket, and cover the actual faucet with e.g. your hand. Turn on the water on the connected end, and water should be forced from one line, past the plugged faucet, and come out the other line. Anything caught inside the faucet should come out, because the supply lines are big enough to have let it in, so they’re big enough to let it out.
Ohhhh, I’m going to give that a try! It’s too late tonight, but I’m going to do this first thing tomorrow. Certainly before I buy another faucet. Thank you so much for spelling this out @CLWheeljack!
Okay, I tried it but didn’t get a good result. I think I did it correctly.
I turned off both hot and cold supply valves. I unhooked the cold and pointed the end from the faucet into a bucket. I opened the hot supply valve and held my hand over the faucet. I had taken the aerator thing off the end of teh hose, so I could plug it with my thumb. Water came out the faucet into the bucket.
BUT I realized I wasn’t getting any water through the faucet. I took my thumb off the end of the hose and there was NOTHING. So somehow the water was coming in from the hot supply and exiting the faucet without actually coming up to the hose part of the faucet.
I realized I had the faucet open for COLD water. It’s one of those single valves where you twist it one way for cold, the other for hot. I had it pointed towards cold. I moved it to hot and got a big spray out the hose. I clamped it down as best I could. I actually got a lot of water all over the place. :) I think I was still getting water into the bucket under the sink. It didn’t seem to fix the problem. I could probably do a better job with someone else to help, but I’m on my own tonight. I might give it another shot in the morning.
Questions:
Was it doing anything to have the faucet open to cold? Is that even flushing anything out? I don’t suppose it was.
How can I plug the end of the hose better? I suppose that’s the trick, right? It seems like the faucet has to be open toward the supply line that is feeding it AND the faucet hose has to be plugged in order to get the back-flush thing to work.
Thanks for your help men. I feel a little out of my league, but I’m going to give it another go tomorrow. It would be so nice to get this faucet working again!
I’m not sure about the details of the cold/hot side, it probably depends a bit on exact configuration of the hoses inside the faucet. Having it open halfway between hot and cold should work to let it flow through. Otherwise, you can probably just move it through the range and see what happens?
It’s definitely easier with two people, as most things are, but possible with some under counter contortions.
Also consider removing the faucet from your sink and back-flushing from the end with a garden hose. (If you can snake the garden hose into the kitchen, you don’t have to remove the faucet, but be prepared to catch lots of water.) Or try wrapping your mouth around the end of the faucet (after cleaning it of course) and blowing through it. If the blockage is downstream of where the hot and cold water inputs combine, you won’t be able to clear it by backflushing from the supplies.
Well, I was never successful with the back flush thing, but I did install a new faucet today and it has super pressure. I took the old one back to Costco and it was the EXACT same price of the new one, so I broke even, but I got to try out that back flush stuff, which should have worked and which I’m sure to try in the future if this new one gets clogged.
The new one is a much better faucet, it seems like. It just feels more sturdy.
Oh, I actually discovered that the aerator in the old one had a shut off switch, so I just had to leave the aerator attached to the hose and use the switch to block the flow. Duh! But even that was no help. Whatever was stuck in there just wouldn’t come out. I tried using both lines, but neither did any good. When I have the supply lines under the sink open, the water pressure is pretty decent. So it was just in the faucet itself and I couldn’t figure out how to clear it.
Congratulations on your newfound water pressure! It must be a relief after a month of not having any.
Reading this thread, I suddenly don’t feel bad for having a plumber install my kitchen faucet several years ago. I felt bad because he charged me $75, and it only took him maybe 20 minutes.
So the following year when my bathroom faucet needed replacing, I decided to do it myself. It went pretty much fine (no leaks anyway), but I ended up cracking my sink because I wasn’t using the proper tools (special wrench).
There are a lot of jobs that are simple*, while actually being pretty tricky. Painting, for instance, is one of those that it amazes me how bad I am at.
* but only if you have the right tools, or the correct experience.
