But speaking of sagas, I have had an ongoing one with my kitchen faucet. At some point when I was in Mexico City, the water pressure in the faucet dropped. Now, my condo has amazing water pressure normally- you could probably pressure wash a deck with it. So this drop was very noticeable- it was down to a trickle! If we wanted to do dishes we had to port water from the bathroom with the kettle or let it run for a good 20 minutes while doing something else. It was so annoying.
I called the building super the next day and he said they had just started doing some repairs related to water pressure values and that must be the cause and basically told me to wait until the repairs are done for him to come check my unit. Well to make a long story short, the repairs went on for a MONTH. Finally this past Wednesday they announced the repairs were complete...but I still had no water pressure. Hmm.
It dawned on me on Thursday that I could just test the water pressure myself to see if the issue was my pipes or my faucet. So I cleared out under the sink on Friday night and got to work! PS- the urge to build, clean, or repair seems to hit me at odd times. Hence how I found myself under the sink on a Friday night when I was home alone.
Also, please don't judge my iPhone pics. Plumbing is not the time for photography.
Anyway, I set up a bucket under one of the pipes, turned off the water, disconnect the hose for the faucet, and covered the open hole with a baggy (my dad's idea!). I turned on the water a tiny bit and it ERUPTED with water pressure, Huh. So problem had apparently been my faucet the whole time.
After that there was an hour or two of various weird ways to try and find the problem, which we assumed was a blockage in the hose. I won't go into details, but it was hilarious and 100% would have made plumbers pee their pants laughing at me. :)
Finally after all this time I actually read the install manual for my faucet and at the very end in tiny writing it was all "if you have low water pressure, try checking for debris in the second screen in the faucet". I had NO idea there was a filter beyond the aerator.
I had to unscrew the faucet head (which, I will add, I didn't even know came off). Also- note to all you budding plumbers out there- do not let go of the hose after the faucet head is removed because it WILL snap back into the hole and you will need pliers and a prayer to get it back out again.
And Bam! There was the 2nd screen with a putrid green ball of I-don't-know-what stuck to it!!! I had to use pliers to get it out. I took a picture, but I had a trouble getting the phone to focus. But then, I guess no one would want to see this grossness in focus. It was like if one of Kermit the Frog's toes had gangrene.
Oh, and the next day a friend was kind enough to point out that we had been drinking water out of this faucet with the frog toe in it for the past month. So thank you for that reminder, my friend.
Anyway, I screwed the faucet all back together and now it works again!! There is also a very slight leak from the back of the faucet head (where I am pointing to in picture 2 shots up). This seems to be a due to a broken seal (completely unrelated to my repair job- I had a leak from here before) but I got it all back together as tight as I could and it is like 99.9% good now.
So yay running water again! It is a Christmas Miracle!
Glad your faucet is back to normal! We constantly had issues like this in our old house. We had hard water so we had to always clean the white build up in the filter. So annoying!
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