Addressing Your Leaky Faucet

Leaky faucets not only make annoying sounds and leave pools of water, they also waste water. Not a huge conservationist? This might grab your attention: that wasted water raises your monthly water bill. But calling a plumber can be expensive too. Before doing that, take a little time out of your day to see if you can fix it on your own.

Please note that the below steps are only recommended for people who feel comfortable with their tools and handyman capabilities. If you have little - no experience working with tools, please call a licensed plumber instead.

There are too many makes and models to be able to tell exactly how to fix your specific sink, part by part, but there are general guidelines you can follow. First, you'll want to go to your manufacturer's homepage and see if they have a diagram of your sink on the website. If not, you can usually request this information and have it sent to you.

Before taking your sink apart, try and find out what type of water-control mechanism you have. Single-handled faucets can have either a ball, cartridge or disc mechanism. Dual-handled faucets can have either a compression, disc or cartridge mechanisms. Of these four mechanisms, compression faucets are most likely to leak to do the functionality of the design causing more wear-and-tear on the washers.

To get started, crawl underneath your sink and be sure that the water is turned off. Following a diagram of your faucet, start taking it apart. As you take each piece apart, look for any signs of leakage such as loose or damaged sealants (o-rings, washers, etc) or wetness where there shouldn't be. If you cannot isolate the location of the leak, put the faucet back together, making sure everything is tightened. If this does not fix the leak, replace all sealants. If the problem persists, call a licensed plumber.

Greg Mauro is a staff author for Best Home Resource as well as Help for Health and it's conglomerate sites.