Widespread faucet fix

jdjohn

A few days ago, my wife and I were sitting downstairs watching TV, and suddenly heard the sound of water running upstairs. When I tracked it down, water was spewing from under the sink in the guest bathroom. Thank GOODNESS we were home when this happened. I turned off the valves on the supply lines, and eventually tracked down the leak to the yellow circled area here:

The silverish rod in the middle is for the stopper lever.

I've never replaced a widespread faucet like this, and don't see a practical way to remove the fittings, mainly due to those short copper hot/cold pipes. If I loosen and move that brass nut, will the pipe come out easily? I'm guessing there is a compression fitting under the nut that won't be easy to deal with, so I'm considering just cutting those short pipes, and yanking them out. Then, I can probably loosen the mounting nuts and remove the hot/cold valves topside for replacement.

Maybe there's some sort of conversion kit to replace those copper pipes so I can keep the topside faucet and hot/cold handles...since they match the other bathroom fixtures.

Any advice is appreciated!

treitz3

That's just a compression joint. Unscrew the nut, loosen the faucet on the L side (Hot water tap), separate them and replace the compression ring. When tightening everything back up, straighten the lines and tighten everything down.

That should fix everything, unless you have a crack in the supply lines.

Tom

treitz3

That said, I did notice you have another drop of water here...



Is that nut tight? (lower nut) as well as the nut at the lower part of the drain assembly (top nut on the photo)?

Tom

jdjohn

Thanks for chiming in, Tom. Water was spraying everywhere, so it all got wet. Kinda crazy how it went bad all at once for no apparent reason. It didn't go from a slow leak to a burst pipe...the connection just failed suddenly. Again, thank goodness we were home. I got upstairs pretty quickly, but water was already spilling into the floor vent register, and beginning to spill into the hallway. I hate to think about what we would have come home to if we had been out somewhere.

audioluvr

I would just retighten all those they just worked themselves loose over time. The hot side is usually the first to go

OR

Replace with new. Compression fittings are not very reliable. If the ferrule isn't tightened evenly, they leak (which these are not) if you under tighten them, they leak. If you over tighten them, they leak.....

jdjohn

Maybe I can straighten it out, too. You can see that the pipe is going in a bit crooked.

VR3

Flo by moen...

Installed mine 5 years ago, alerts me even if a faucet has an extremely slow drip!

motorstereo

jdjohn wrote: »

Maybe I can straighten it out, too. You can see that the pipe is going in a bit crooked.

And there's your problem. If it was me I'd replace the entire faucet assembly for the peace of mind rather than try to straighten that kinked line. Since you already have to spend some time laying under the sink why not go all new as faucets aren't that much.

Keep in mind as well that as with any plumbing project a 45 minute job could turn into 6 hours.

Emlyn

How high is the water pressure in the house? It looks like when both the faucets were originally installed the fittings moved a little when the faucet nuts were being tightened and bent the pipes going into the fittings or the faucets moved a little over time and caused the fittings to fail.

I'd scrap it and start over.

treitz3

You never know how much was spent originally or how much trouble it would be to "simply" replace a faucet and have everything else you see match.

Tom

Toolfan66

I have never seen a faucet setup like that, are parts even available for something like this? The compression ring I’m sure is no problem, but this looks fairly old, and I understand wanting to save it, but if you can’t fully rebuild the whole unit I would pass and move on to like a Delta 3 piece unit..

Gardenstater

In my opinion you'd need to remove the whole thing and desolder and solder in a new soft copper pipe and install a new compression ferrule and reinstall with everything aligned properly this time. Whoever did that install chimped it up pretty badly as far as the alignment goes. Once a compression ferrule has bitten into the pipe it isn't replaceable. Before desoldering you should make sure any plastic/rubber parts are removed from the faucet.

msg

Toolfan66 wrote: »

I have never seen a faucet setup like that, are parts even available for something like this? The compression ring I’m sure is no problem, but this looks fairly old, and I understand wanting to save it, but if you can’t fully rebuild the whole unit I would pass and move on to like a Delta 3 piece unit..

What are the spirals for, Larry?

jdjohn

Scott, those allow the pipes to be bent/curved without kinking.

Also: ribbed for her pleasure

pitdogg2

Dang we really need the ability to lol and agree at the same time....
Scott, Jody is correct.....on both accounts lmao 🤣🤣🤣

jdjohn

Progress!

After loosening the compression nuts, and the topside lock nuts for the valves, I was able to twist the center piece, and then wiggle the valves enough to get the pipes out. There are/were rotted rubber bushings where the pipes go into the valve stems.

jdjohn

Cut the copper tubes:

The rest came off pretty easy after this. That 'T' fitting unscrewed much easier than I expected, which was a relief.

Guy at Home Depot said I'd have to go to a plumbing supply warehouse to maybe find necessary parts, due to their age. After a chat with the wife...we're replacing with new.

audioluvr

Good choice.
1. Never listen to anyone at HD. They suck.
2. A good qualified plumber could repair this
3. Good luck finding a good qualified plumber.
4. If you do he'll probably charge $250-500 for the repairs.
5. A new modern one that you can install in 10 minutes will cost $29.95 - $199.95 at HD (with no help from the idiots working there.)

dromunds

6. Never go to Walmart or HD

motorstereo

dromunds wrote: »

6. Never go to Walmart or HD

So a better choice would be Target or Lowes???

jdjohn

Or Ace?

VR3

8 in faucet spread can be a little pricey, I would expect to pay 300 for a quality set

Emlyn

True. The inexpensive models that look appealing on the surface at one third the price packaged at big box stores tend to come with plastic supply lines with quick connects and inferior metals and seals. Manufacturing in China makes it really easy to turn a lot of profit by squeezing out the quality incrementally here and there. It's worth it to buy a quality product with flexible metal connectors. Inexpensive junk and quality products are both equally easy to install.

VR3

You can find some decent stuff at Lowes and HD but I would definitrly stay away from the cheaper models unless you plan to replace again in 5 years or ar just simply selling in the near future

Higher end delta models have fantastic clamping mechanisms to secure the fixtures so they don't spin over time

invalid

The big box stores don't sell the same Moen, Delta, price Pfister or American standard faucets as a plumbing supply store, even though they look the same.

tonyb

It's just a faucet, buy a new one at any of the big box stores. Easy peasey. Not worth fixing that old stuff or the time and aggravation.You can spend 300 bucks on a faucet from a plumbers supply store, or 69 bucks from a big box store. They will do the same thing. Calling a plumber is rediculous, if you haven't seen what one charges lately. Water supply lines are cheap too if you need new ones.

dromunds

Buy local as much possible. Fock the big box stores. And as mentioned, the big box stores don’t sell the same as the plumbing supply store - same with John Deere lawn tractors and a host of other stuff. Those big box stores in many cases drove the local stores out of business. I won’t even walk into a Walmart or HD or Lowes. I haven’t for over a decade. Fock em.

mhardy6647

invalid wrote: »

The big box stores don't sell the same Moen, Delta, price Pfister or American standard faucets as a plumbing supply store, even though they look the same.

This is absolutely true, unfortunately.
The Mfg catalog (or part) numbers are different -- as is the quality.
They're "custom" products for the box store that spec's 'em and built to a price point. They're often not identical even cosmetically to the topline products (e.g., Kohler), but they could be.

You get what you pay for.
It's seems funny to me that folks who are very particular about a hifi component -- or a power cable -- would be not very particular about, say, a bathroom faucet. Home Depot sells RCA cables, too, you know?

EDIT: Just to be clear, the above is meant as an abstract observation and not meant to reflect on anyone posting to this thread! That's why I used the subjunctive ("would")!

jdjohn

Well, I don't want to to out-class the rest of the bathroom, so I'm going builder grade for this. We plan to build a new house within the next year or two, and we'll use better fixtures in that.

invalid

Go with what vr3 said don't get the cheapest one, get a higher quality faucet at the box store and you should be fine for quite a few years.

motorstereo

I installed a builder grade faucet in my upstairs bathroom some 30+ years ago. Knock on wood first I haven't had an issue. But the better faucet that I have in the downstairs bath I've replaced twice in that same time period. You'll be just fine with what you have planned.