Couldn't fix the faucet, so I replaced it.
 

There's no real point to this post, unless folks want to discuss what
the problem might have been...

Up until last night, I had this faucet in my kitchen:

http://www.us.kohler.com/onlinecatal...0/ccc10121.jpg

A few months ago we noticed that there was substantially less pressure
on the hot side than on the cold. I timed it and found that for a
given container, the cold filled it in 7.5 seconds, but the hot took
over 10 seconds.

Getting warm water was a pain, because you had to go almost all the
way to hot and then you started losing pressure.

I called Kohler and they sent me new cartridge. It didn't help, so I
tried a few things. I swapped the hot and cold inlet tubes and the
problem moved to the cold side - in fact it was even worse. That told
me that the problem was in the faucet, not my plumbing.

I pulled the cartridge and, leaving the inlet tubes hanging over a
pot, I poured water down into the body hoping to flush something out
of the tubes. I saw a little debris in the pot and hoped I'd cleared
it.

No such luck. The problem was still there when I put it back together.

I replaced the faucet with a similar model from Delta (with a lifetime
guarantee) and now get 7.5 second fill times from both hot and cold,
and warm water when I center the handle.

I can only assume that there is something blocking the fill tube that
didn't get flushed out. I may take it apart just to see.

Couldn't fix the faucet, so I replaced it.
 

"Nate Nagel" wrote in message
...
On 06/08/2011 06:56 PM, Steve B wrote:
wrote in message
...
There's no real point to this post, unless folks want to discuss what
the problem might have been...

Up until last night, I had this faucet in my kitchen:

http://www.us.kohler.com/onlinecatal...0/ccc10121.jpg

A few months ago we noticed that there was substantially less pressure
on the hot side than on the cold. I timed it and found that for a
given container, the cold filled it in 7.5 seconds, but the hot took
over 10 seconds.

Getting warm water was a pain, because you had to go almost all the
way to hot and then you started losing pressure.

I called Kohler and they sent me new cartridge. It didn't help, so I
tried a few things. I swapped the hot and cold inlet tubes and the
problem moved to the cold side - in fact it was even worse. That told
me that the problem was in the faucet, not my plumbing.

I pulled the cartridge and, leaving the inlet tubes hanging over a
pot, I poured water down into the body hoping to flush something out
of the tubes. I saw a little debris in the pot and hoped I'd cleared
it.

No such luck. The problem was still there when I put it back together.

I replaced the faucet with a similar model from Delta (with a lifetime
guarantee) and now get 7.5 second fill times from both hot and cold,
and warm water when I center the handle.

I can only assume that there is something blocking the fill tube that
didn't get flushed out. I may take it apart just to see.

We bit the bullet, and went Moen on the two bathrooms and kitchen
remodel.
So far, so good. I built a house in 1984 using only Moen. Sold it in
1994.
Never touched anything.

Went round and round with Delta, Price Pfister, et al. Yes, they will
send
you replacement plastic cartridges that only MAY be better than the part
replaced. Sometimes problem solved, sometimes problem solved for a short
time, sometimes problem worse.

Ya pays ya money and ya takes ya chances.

Steve



Hmm... I've had a spate of failing Moens lately mostly having to do with
the sprayer nozzle and/or diverter valve. Two of 'em failed, one is a
replacement for one of the failed ones, I took the sprayer apart on that
one and put it on the other bad one, but it still has a bad diverter.
(both diverter and sprayer failed on that one. Diverter only failed on
the other.) Both in houses w/ city water, not unusually hard or
mineral-laden.

nate

It's a puzzlement, nate. I never had a problem, and you did. You clearly
must have been doing something wrong.

Don't you love it when people in hr tell you that? I guess I just got lucky
with my Moen products. I like the look of the new ones we got. We got the
high end stuff, and it's nice. Hope we don't have any trouble with it, but
who knows...........

Steve

Couldn't fix the faucet, so I replaced it.
 

Nate Nagel wrote:
Hmm... I've had a spate of failing Moens lately mostly having to do
with the sprayer nozzle and/or diverter valve. Two of 'em failed, one
is a replacement for one of the failed ones, I took the sprayer apart
on that one and put it on the other bad one, but it still has a bad
diverter. (both diverter and sprayer failed on that one. Diverter
only failed on the other.) Both in houses w/ city water, not
unusually hard or mineral-laden.


The diverter that failed "irrepairably" for me was finally traced to an old seal
that had been stuck in the fixture when the diverter had been replaced earlier.