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dpb dpb is offline
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Default Vexing plumbing problem

Speedy Jim wrote:
Dan Musicant wrote:

My kitchen faucet does the drip, drip drip thing.

I shut off the water at the cold water shutoff, remove the stem from the
hot water valve at the kitchen sink and see one, two or three tiny


Not really pertinent to the drip, but there isn't a cutoff valve at the
sink for the hot and cold? Should be...
....
brush off the "grains" with an old tooth brush and put the stem back
together, open the water and no more drip, drip drip. I never get this
with the cold water stem.

....
They put in some copper pipe from the tankless heater, but the line that
goes from there to my kitchen sink is around 30-40 feet of no-doubt old
galvanized pipe, and giving off sediment, presumably the rusting innards
of the pipe. I reasoned that this is what's causing the tiny particles

....

I'll be surprised if it's flakes of rust from the galv pipe.

It might be solidified calcium deposits from the heater.

See if you can collect some particles and then pour a few
drops of muriatic acid over them. If there is frothing
and the particles pretty much disappear after a while, that
would indicate calcium/other minerals.


Vinegar will do the same test and more likely to have it around.

A filter would probably solve the problem -- it's pretty clear it has to
be in the hot line. I'd not rule out the recently completed work has
disturbed old piping and still getting some particulate from that.

It would, imo, be highly likely that removing the galvanized would
probably solve the problem although w/ time it'll either go away as
finish flushing out the system completely or it'll get worse if you
actually have a portion of that line that is actively deteriorating and
is the source.

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