Faucet repair in Southeast Michigan

Most dripping faucets do not need replacing. Faucet repair is usually a cartridge, a pair of O rings or a seat and spring set, and the parts cost a small fraction of a new fixture plus the labor to set it. Wright’s bathroom repair crew carries rebuild kits for the brands that dominate Southeast Michigan houses, so the common repairs happen on the first visit rather than after a parts run.

What is inside the handle you keep tightening

Faucets come in four internal designs and the repair depends entirely on which one you have. Cartridge faucets use a single replaceable sleeve and are the most common in houses built since the eighties. Ball faucets use a slotted metal ball and a set of springs and seats, and they are the single leakiest design once they age. Ceramic disc faucets are the most durable and need attention least often. Compression faucets, with separate hot and cold handles that tighten down, are what you find in prewar houses and they need a washer.

Tightening a handle to stop a drip works for about a week, and every time you do it you crush the seal a little more. That is why the drip always comes back worse.

Where the water is coming from

A drip from the spout is an internal seal. Water seeping around the base of the handle is usually an O ring. A puddle in the cabinet under the sink is something else entirely, and it is the one worth acting on quickly, because the cabinet floor and the subfloor under it absorb water quietly for months before anything shows.

We check the supply lines, the shutoff valves and the drain assembly together, because a cabinet leak often turns out to be a failed P trap joint rather than the faucet at all. Fixing the wrong one is how a homeowner ends up with a new faucet and the same puddle.

Hard water, and why Michigan faucets fail early

Groundwater across much of Washtenaw and Livingston counties runs hard. Dissolved calcium and magnesium leave scale on every internal surface water touches, and scale is abrasive. It chews through rubber seals, roughens the ceramic in disc cartridges and blocks aerators until the stream splits sideways. A faucet that would last fifteen years on soft water often needs a rebuild here in six or seven.

Two things extend that. Cleaning the aerator every few months takes five minutes and restores most lost pressure. A softener protects every fixture in the house rather than only the one annoying you right now. We do not sell or install softeners, and we will tell you when the fixture in front of us is losing to water chemistry rather than to age.

Low pressure at one fixture only

When one faucet runs weak and the rest of the house is fine, the problem is nearly always local. The usual order is aerator first, then the supply stop valve, which sometimes has been left partly closed for years, then the cartridge itself, then the supply line. If pressure is low everywhere, that is a service level question and it belongs with a licensed plumber rather than with us.

What a faucet repair visit covers

• Cartridge, ball assembly, seat and spring, or washer replacement to suit the design
• O ring and spout seal replacement on a base that weeps
• Aerator cleaning or replacement, and diverter repair on a pull out sprayer
• Shutoff valve replacement when the old one is seized or will not seal
• Handle and escutcheon replacement where corrosion has locked the trim

The kitchen sink, and why it wears out first

A kitchen faucet gets used many times more often than any fixture in a bathroom, and it gets pulled, twisted and sprayed rather than simply turned. Pull down sprayers add two more failure points, the diverter that sends water to the spray head and the hose that retracts into the cabinet. When the spray head dribbles while the main stream runs, the diverter is the part. When the head will not pull back up, the counterweight has slipped off the hose.

Both are inexpensive repairs on a decent fixture and both are worth doing rather than living with. On a cheap fixture the sprayer assembly is often molded rather than serviceable, which is the point where a replacement makes more sense than a rebuild.

Outdoor spigots and the freeze that splits them

Hose bibbs fail on a Michigan schedule. Water left in the line freezes, expands and splits the pipe behind the wall, and the split does not announce itself until somebody turns the tap on in April and water appears in the basement. A frost free bibb reduces the risk considerably, and it only works if the hose is disconnected before the first hard freeze. We repair and replace them, and we would rather do it in October than in April.

When a rebuild is throwing money at it

A faucet with a cracked body, a corroded mounting shank or a finish flaking off in sheets is finished, and no cartridge fixes any of that. Very cheap builder grade fixtures often have no serviceable parts at all. And a discontinued fixture whose parts take three weeks to source is rarely worth waiting for unless it is a genuine period piece somebody wants to keep. In those cases we quote a bathroom faucet replacement instead, or point you at a wider fixture upgrade if the rest of the room is the same vintage.

Shower and tub valves are a different animal

A shower handle that drips or will not hold temperature is not a faucet repair in the same sense, because the working parts sit inside the wall. Some of those repair from the front with a cartridge. Others need the valve body changed, which means opening tile. That work is scoped as shower valve replacement and priced accordingly, and we look at it before we promise anything.

Work that goes to a licensed plumber

Fixture level work is ours. The main water line, the sewer line, anything gas fired including the water heater, and any new plumbing that requires a permit go to a licensed plumber. No hot water anywhere in the house is a water heater question, not a faucet question, and we will say so on the phone rather than after we arrive.

Catching the drips before they become damage

• An annual walk through that finds slow leaks while they are still small
• Supply lines and shutoffs checked before one of them lets go
• Outdoor spigots handled ahead of the first hard freeze
• A first pass on a house you have just bought, where nothing has a history yet
• Fixture upgrades when the room is due for more than repair

Where we work across Southeast Michigan

Repair calls run out of our Ypsilanti shop into Washtenaw, Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston and Monroe counties. Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and Plymouth see us most often, and the mix of prewar compression faucets and nineties cartridge fixtures in those neighborhoods is exactly why the truck carries both kinds of kit.

Stop the drip

Tell us the brand on the handle and where the water appears, and we will usually know the part before we get there. View our Portfolio to see the bathrooms and kitchens our crews build, or contact us now for a free quote.