Kitchen faucet replacement
 

The kitchen sink in my apartment has what I believe is an off-brand clone of
a Delta single handle faucet. There's not a name or marking on it anywhere,
and I can't believe Delta would produce a faucet without at least a small
brand indication. Anyway...that's not the issue, at least not entirely.

A week ago, I found a pond under the sink. I thought it was leaking from
where the flexible hot water supply tube meets the faucet. The apartment's
maintenance guy felt that leakage from around the faucet neck was the
culprit, due to worn O-rings, and that the deck gasket was old enough that
it allowed the water to seep underneath. He was right. He claims to have
rebuilt it. He *did* solve the original problem, but created another: The
water cannot be shut off now - the faucet leaks constantly, much more than a
drip sometimes. He's been back 3 times to fix it, to no avail. Silly. I
suspect that if the faucet's a clone, there's no such thing as a rebuild kit
that'll work correctly.

When I owned a home, I rebuilt this type of faucet several times. There was
never a problem afterward. It always worked. I'm getting tired of the
nonsense here. For reasons I won't go into here, I could replace the entire
faucet myself and get away with deducting the cost from the next rent check.
But, I want to do the job in what we'd all consider "the right amount of
time", as opposed to those jobs which should take X hours, but which are
full of surprises and end up taking (X * 1000) hours. I believe the variable
in this case is the flexible supply tubes. The last time I installed a
faucet (Delta, 10 years ago), the tubes connected via compression fittings.
It worked, but I wasn't impressed with the idea. Here in my apt, I've
followed those tubes with my hand and they seem to meet up with another
hex-shaped fitting attached to the little pipes that are part of the faucet.
The question: What is the likelihood that I'm dealing with nice, easy
threaded fitting?

A) High probability
B) 50/50
C) If you want to go fishing this weekend, the chances are ZIP and you'll
need an acetylene torch.

Kitchen faucet replacement
 

Doug Kanter wrote:
The kitchen sink in my apartment has what I believe is an off-brand
clone of a Delta single handle faucet. There's not a name or marking
on it anywhere, and I can't believe Delta would produce a faucet
without at least a small brand indication. Anyway...that's not the
issue, at least not entirely.
/snip/
I believe the variable in this case is the
flexible supply tubes. The last time I installed a faucet (Delta, 10
years ago), the tubes connected via compression fittings. It worked,
but I wasn't impressed with the idea. Here in my apt, I've followed
those tubes with my hand and they seem to meet up with another
hex-shaped fitting attached to the little pipes that are part of the
faucet. The question: What is the likelihood that I'm dealing with
nice, easy threaded fitting?

A) High probability
B) 50/50
C) If you want to go fishing this weekend, the chances are ZIP and
you'll need an acetylene torch.

Final answer: A. If you are lucky you can remove the faucet with the
compression-fitted extension tubing attached. Otherwise, use an
open-end wrench to hold the (upper) hex-shaped fitting on the tube
directly connected to the faucet while you use another open-end wrench
to unscrew (counter-clockwise) the extension tube. Replace the
extension tubes when you replace the faucet and avoid a bunch of
headaches. I like the short stainless steel hoses that the big box
stores sell for this purpose.