On Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:15:08 -0500, dpb wrote:

: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...

Actually, now that you mention it, there is a cutoff but not at the
kitchen sink. It's at the heater, which is located on an outside wall. I
could as easily use it, I just forgot about it. I guess it's force of
habit, because the first time I didn't know if it was the hot or cold
stem that was letting in the water. It's a slow drip, around every 2-3
second, usually.
:...
: 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.

Yeah, I sure do have vinegar, no muriatic acid. I'll try that. I cleared
the stem this morning, so it will have to wait a few days until it
starts dripping again.
:
: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
robably 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.

One thing I didn't think of is opening up the kitchen hot stem and
letting it flow full on for a minute or two. I usually have a pretty
restricted flow.

Thanks.

Dan