Faucet Repair and Replacement in Southwest Florida

Why a faucet drips: it depends on the valve inside

Every single-handle and two-handle faucet sold in the last few decades uses one of four valve designs. The design tells us what wore out, what the fix costs in parts and time, and whether the repair will last. Before we pull anything apart, we look at how the handle moves. That usually tells us the valve type.

Compression valves

These are the oldest design and still show up in older Fort Myers and Punta Gorda homes, laundry sinks and hose bibbs. Each handle turns a threaded stem that squeezes a rubber washer down onto a brass seat. You can feel it: the handle keeps turning tighter and tighter before the water stops. A drip from the spout means the washer is hardened or chewed, or the seat underneath is pitted. Water leaking around the handle means the stem packing or O-ring is gone. A washer and a seat dressing or replacement seat usually brings it back. If the seat is cut badly and isn’t removable, the faucet body is done.

Cartridge valves

Many single-handle kitchen and bath faucets use a cartridge, a plastic or brass cylinder that slides and rotates to mix hot and cold. The handle moves smoothly with no hard stop at off. Drips and stiff handles come from worn O-rings on the cartridge or mineral scale binding it. The fix is a new cartridge that matches the manufacturer and model. They are not universal, so we identify the faucet before we order or pull a part from stock.

Ball valves

A single lever sitting on a rounded cap is often a ball faucet. A slotted ball rotates over two rubber seats held up by small springs. These faucets tend to drip from the spout when the seats and springs flatten, and leak from under the cap when the cam packing wears. A seat and spring kit plus a new cam and packing typically handles it. Ball faucets have more small parts than any other type, so they are the ones homeowners most often put back together wrong.

Ceramic disc valves

Most current faucets use two polished ceramic discs that slide across each other. They rarely wear out from use. When they do leak, the cause is usually a cracked disc from debris, grit trapped between the discs, or the rubber seals at the bottom of the cartridge. Debris often shows up right after water main work or a line repair, when sediment gets pushed through the system. Sometimes cleaning the seals and flushing the line is enough. If a disc is chipped, the cartridge gets replaced.

Hard water, scale and clogged aerators

Mineral content varies a lot across our service area. Cape Coral’s city water is treated with reverse osmosis, while homes in Lehigh Acres, Alva and the outer parts of Collier County often run on private wells that draw from limestone aquifers and carry calcium and sometimes iron. Scale from hard water is one of the main reasons we see stiff handles, cartridges that seize, and spray patterns that go sideways.

The aerator is the screen at the tip of the spout. It mixes air into the stream and, on most faucets, also limits the flow rate. It is the first place scale and grit collect. Unscrewing it, soaking it in white vinegar, and brushing the screens clears a lot of weak or splattering faucets. Some aerators are hidden inside the spout and need a small key to remove. If it is crusted beyond cleaning, a new one with the same flow rating is a cheap part.

If you are replacing cartridges every couple of years or the aerators fill with white grit, the water itself is the problem. Our water softener and filtration page covers treatment options, and local readers can check the Cape Coral water quality guide for what comes out of the city system.

Low flow: one faucet or the whole house

The first question is whether the weak flow is at one fixture or everywhere. That splits the diagnosis in half.

• One faucet, both hot and cold weak: clogged aerator, scaled cartridge, or a kinked or restricted supply line. Pull the aerator first.
• One faucet, only hot weak: often debris from the water heater lodged in the hot side of the cartridge or in the hot supply line. Older tank heaters shed sediment and pieces of dip tube.
• One faucet, only cold weak: a partly closed or failing angle stop, or debris in the cold inlet screen on newer faucets.
• Every fixture weak: not a faucet problem. Look at the main shutoff, the pressure reducing valve, a well pressure tank, or corroded galvanized piping.

Many pull-down kitchen faucets also have small screens or check valves where the hose connects to the supply. Those catch grit after any water main break or flushing. If the whole house is affected, our water pressure problems page goes through the system-level causes.

Leaking at the base versus leaking from the spout

Where the water shows up tells us which part failed, so it is worth looking closely before calling.

Spout drip with the handle off: the valve isn’t sealing. That is the washer and seat on a compression faucet, the cartridge on a cartridge or disc faucet, or the seats and springs on a ball faucet.

Water pooling around the base while it runs: on faucets with a swiveling spout, the O-rings that seal the spout to the body are worn. Rotate the spout and watch for seepage at the joint. This is common on older single-handle kitchen faucets.

Water under the sink but not on the deck: check the supply line connections, the compression nut at the angle stop, the pull-down hose, and the drain. A leaking P-trap or basket strainer gets blamed on the faucet all the time. We dry everything with a paper towel, run the water, and find the first wet spot.

Water around the handle: stem O-rings or packing on two-handle faucets, or a cracked handle adapter. A slow leak under a sink cabinet will swell particleboard and grow mold in a Florida summer well before you notice the drip, so check under the sink when you see any of these signs.

Kitchen pull-down and pull-out faucets

Pull-down faucets add parts that standard faucets don’t have: a spray hose, a weight that pulls the head back into the spout, a quick-connect fitting under the sink, and often a diverter button in the spray head. Each one is a failure point.

• Hose leaks show up as water dripping off the hose under the sink while the faucet runs. The hose can usually be replaced without swapping the faucet if the brand still sells it.
• A head that won’t retract usually means the weight slid down the hose or the hose is snagging on the drain, disposal or bottles in the cabinet.
• Spray that won’t switch back to stream means the diverter is scaled. Soaking the head can free it. Replacement heads are sold for most major brands.
• Quick-connect fittings that weep are often a damaged O-ring from the hose being pulled too far or the connection being forced at an angle.

If the faucet is due for replacement anyway, it can make sense to look at the rest of the sink at the same time: the disposal, the drain, the dishwasher connection. Our kitchen plumbing page covers that work.

Bathroom faucets: centerset, widespread and single-hole

Before buying a new bathroom faucet, count the holes in the sink or countertop and measure from the center of the left hole to the center of the right one. That spread decides what fits.

Vessel sinks need a tall-body faucet or a wall-mount spout. Pop-up drain assemblies often come with new bathroom faucets, and it’s usually worth installing the new one since the old pivot rod and gasket are frequently where the slow leak under the vanity is coming from. Bigger bathroom changes are on our bathroom plumbing page.

Outdoor kitchens, bar sinks and laundry faucets

Lanai kitchens and outdoor bar sinks are common across Cape Coral, Naples and Estero, and they take a beating. Salt air near the Gulf and the coast corrodes chrome-plated zinc and cheap brass finishes quickly. For outdoor sinks we lean toward solid stainless steel or faucets rated for outdoor use, and we check that the supply lines and shutoffs under the outdoor cabinet aren’t corroding inside a closed, humid box.

Bar and prep sinks inside the house usually take a smaller faucet with a shorter spout, and many share a cold-only or hot-and-cold supply teed off the kitchen lines. If the bar sink was added later by a previous owner, we look at how it was tied in before trusting the connections.

Laundry and utility sink faucets are often the last compression-style faucets left in a house. They are inexpensive to replace and usually not worth rebuilding. Hose bibbs outside are a different fixture with their own failure points, covered on our hose bib repair page.

Supply lines and angle stop replacement

The angle stop is the small shutoff valve under the sink where the supply line connects. Many homes built in the 1980s and 1990s in Lee and Charlotte County still have the original multi-turn stops with rubber washers inside. After decades without being turned, they often won’t close fully, or they start leaking at the stem the first time someone touches them.

When we replace a faucet, we test the stops before anything else. If one won’t shut off cleanly, we replace it while the house water is off. A quarter-turn ball-type stop is the usual upgrade. It closes with one motion and is less likely to seize. The fitting depends on the pipe: compression for copper or CPVC stubs, crimp or expansion fittings for PEX, push-fit in some cases.

Supply lines get the same look. Braided stainless lines have a service life, and old solid chrome tubes or plastic lines with cracked nuts should come out. A burst supply line under a sink can release a lot of water in a short time, which is why we don’t reuse questionable ones. If you don’t know where your main shutoff is, our main water shutoff guide walks through finding it before you need it.

Flow rates and WaterSense bathroom faucets

Federal rules cap faucet flow at 2.2 gallons per minute at 60 psi. EPA’s WaterSense label goes further for bathroom sink faucets: a labeled faucet or aerator can flow no more than 1.5 gallons per minute at 60 psi and has to deliver at least 0.8 gallons per minute at 20 psi, so it still works in low-pressure homes. Kitchen faucets aren’t covered by the WaterSense lavatory specification and generally run at the 2.2 gpm limit or close to it.

In practice, the flow restrictor in the aerator sets the rate. A low-flow bathroom aerator on an older faucet can save water without replacing anything. The tradeoff: lower-flow aerators clog faster with scale and take longer to fill a basin, and on homes with low pressure they can feel weak. If a new faucet seems disappointing compared to the old one, the aerator is usually the reason, not a defect.

Lead-free requirements for new faucets

The Reduction of Lead in Drinking Water Act changed the federal definition of lead-free effective January 4, 2014. Pipes, fittings and fixtures that carry drinking water must now have a weighted average of no more than 0.25 percent lead across their wetted surfaces, down from the old 8 percent allowance. Solder and flux are still limited to 0.2 percent.

For homeowners, that means any kitchen or bathroom faucet sold for drinking water use today meets the lower limit. Faucets installed before 2014 could contain much more lead in their brass bodies. That is one honest reason to replace an old faucet instead of rebuilding it, especially at the kitchen sink where you fill glasses and cooking pots. Look for certification to NSF/ANSI 372 on the box. Faucets meant only for non-drinking uses, like some laundry or outdoor fixtures, can be exempt, which is another reason not to put a utility faucet on a kitchen sink.

Repair or replace: how we decide

We’ll tell you which way we’d go and why. Part availability and the age of the faucet drive most of these calls.

What a faucet visit looks like

We identify the faucet first: brand, model if it’s marked, valve type, and pipe material at the stops. We shut off the stops or the house, then open the faucet up and confirm what failed. If it’s a repair, we replace the worn parts and clean scale from the body. If it’s a replacement, we remove the old faucet, clean the deck, set the new one with the right gasket or plumber’s putty for the finish, connect new supply lines, and replace any stop that didn’t close.

Then we run hot and cold, check every connection dry, pull the aerator to flush debris, and test the drain. Faucets tie into a lot of other small repairs, so if something else under the sink looks wrong, we’ll point it out. Our plumbing repairs page covers the rest of what we handle, and you can send details through our request form or call (239) 518-4198 Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm.