When any of your faucets start leaking, water continuously comes out of it and as a result a lot of water is wasted. Solving this problem is not very complex and here you can learn some simple steps to solve it.
In a house, you can find different types of faucets such as: washer type, washer-less type, the spring, valve type and the disk type. For every faucet, a different repairing method is followed as the parts to be replaced also differ.
If a faucet begins to leak, never use excessive force to close it because that will only cause damage. Nearly all faucets can be taken apart to replace defective parts. Before beginning to work on a faucet, turn off the stop valves on the hot and cold lines. If you don’t have stop valves, you will have to turn off the main water supply valve.
The main problem in washer-type faucets is caused by damage of washers only. For replacing the damaged washer, you first need to take out the screw in the handle (which may be covered by a decorative cap) then take off the handle, loose the packing nut and remove the spindle and washer assembly. The screw is responsible for holding the washer in place. Make sure that you are using the right sized washer for replacement and then reassemble the faucet.
In case the faucet that is leaking is more than 5 years old then you can think of replacing that with a new faucet. However, make sure that you don’t replace a high quality faucet with a low quality one because a high quality faucet is expected to last three times as long as inexpensive faucets.
Stop valves are very essential, so if you do not have a stop valve then get it installed when you plan to replace any of the faucet. Stop valve allows you to stop the water supply at a particular faucet without disturbing the supply of water in rest of your house.
If the water is leaking from the handle of the faucet then you have a faucet handle leak. Generally a washer or packing is used to prevent water from escaping along the spindle. So if water is leaking then that means that problem is either with the washer or packing material under the packing nut and you need to check them.
To solve your handle leaking problem, remove the handle and tighten the packing nut. In case the problem still persists then remove the packing nut and remove the washer that is inside. However, if washer is not there then unwind the old packing and get it replaced.
