Faucet Wisdom

                    There will soon be a new Delta faucet between these two water pitchers.

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A leaky faucet can, if you let it, can become a learning experience. My kitchen faucet had been dripping onto the surface of the cabinet below for a while before I discovered it. Long enough that the surface had buckled. The flow was a drip rather than a rush of water. I placed a plastic pitcher under the leak and, for a few days, it was manageable as long as I remembered to empty the pitcher now and then. When the drip cranked up some, I consulted someone with more plumbing savvy than I and he sent me off to Home Depot where I bought a new faucet. “Should I take the old one?” I asked, guessing that just maybe there would be more options than I’d know how to deal with. But, no, I didn’t take it.

Instead I came home with a replacement that would not work because it had three sink holes and my set up had only one.  Home Depot is very friendly about taking returns and by the line at customer service, it looks like they get plenty of them. They took the $70 faucet back and I returned to the plumbing aisle with a Home Depot adviser who said the $150 model would work. It didn’t. It had the right number of holes but the stem that connected with the drain was too short. I took it back to Home Depot and they were just as friendly when I returned this one. The lady even suggested that I’d better off with a Kohler or Moen faucet rather than a Delta, my current brand.

Back to the plumbing aisle with another adviser who explained that my five-year-old-faucet was too old. They didn’t have a model with a long-enough stem. “Things change so fast,” he explained. He suggested two plumbing specialty shops. I went to them both. Kate at the first one was the most knowledgeable person I countered during the entire experience.

“That’s a great steel faucet you have there,” she said. You can buy a repair kit for $20 unless there’s a leak in the valve, then you’ll definitely need a new faucet. Should you need a new hose, that’s $100, should you need a new spigot, that’s another $100, which means you’re better off buying a new one. By the way, did you know that Delta faucets have a lifetime guarantee?

I moved on to another local plumbing specialty shop where I did find a faucet that   would work for $300. I came very close to buying it but I kept thinking about that lifetime guarantee. Just to make sure I covered all the territory, I stopped at my local Ace Hardware store on the way home where a young lady was kind enough to open up three packages of faucets only to discover that not one of them had a long enough stem.

Back home, miracle of miracles, I found the paperwork for my Delta, called the company, was on hold for less than a minute and in two more had been awarded a brand-new faucet, the exact replica of my old one which now sells, I discovered, for more than $300. I could not have been more surprised or delighted.

I’m managing just fine with importing water from the bathroom to the kitchen for another week or so until my new faucet arrives. My dishwasher works and there’s nothing dripping into my cabinet.

Learnings:

1. I’ll never buy another brand of anything related to plumbing if there’s a Delta available.

2. I know the difference between a one hole and a three hole faucet and I won’t forget about the importance of stem sizes.

3. In retrospect, the whole time-consuming hassle was kinda fun, but I don’t want to repeat it.

4. I’ve spent far too many words talking about faucets.

5. We should all be thankful for automatically running water.