It’s hard to be nestled all snug in your bed, while visions of a flooded basement dance in your head. We get it. Amidst your pre-holiday schedule there arose such a clatter, you had to defer a few home repair matters. Yes, you INTENDED to get those dripping faucets fixed during the pre-Christmas FIXmas season, but that time flew-by faster than Cupid, Donner and Blitzen.
So, why not make your FIRST New Year’s resolution one you can cross-off immediately – a resolution that will give you great tidings of comfort and joy for all of next year. Shutdown that drip-drip-drip on ALL of your faucets. Every last one of them. Not just some phony PARTIAL shutdown like from our perpetually-leaking Federal government, but a REAL TOTAL shutdown.
Kitchen Sinks
Don’t mean to laugh, but it’s funny listening to homeowners describe the stages of denial and grief they go through before they finally accept they need our help to stop their kitchen faucet leak. At first, they try to convince themselves it only happens sometimes, then they convince themselves it will go away by itself. Then they go through a sort-of “bargaining” stage where they put their lever handle through a choreographed set of movements with an unusual ending position to make the dripping stop.
Yes, we can fix those leaks. But honestly, among our happiest customers are those who learn in the process that newer faucets don’t have a separate spray handle because it’s built right into the faucet stem, and as long as we’re out there they’d rather have us install one of those.
Bathroom Sinks
These faucets drip, too, and we can fix them. But could this be a sign from the heavens that it’s time to replace that crummy faucet, which you never much liked in the first place? Folks are often reluctant to call us for this dripping because they think it’s too small a problem to bother a contractor with. Well, that may be true for everyone else, but NOT for Fix St Louis. Remember, we SPECIALIZE in small jobs.
Exterior Faucets
What about those faucets sticking out from the sides of your house, usually low to the ground? These faucets are probably the MOST susceptible to leaks. Not just dripping from the spout, but also spraying all over the place when you turn them on. Sometimes, they even leak within the wall!
The two most common causes of these exterior faucet leaks are: 1) VERY low temperatures freezing the water inside, until it expands and bursts the pipe walls; and 2) Since these faucets tend to be used very rarely, gaskets that have become hard, dried, and compressed, so they no longer do their job.
Sometimes we can fix these faucets from the outside. Other times we can replace them easily with a new frost-resistant faucet if there’s an unfinished room or drop ceiling on the other side. Worst case, we can make the replacement by cutting-into the finished/painted drywall on the inside, then either cover the cut area with a plastic access panel (to make repairs easier the next time) or patch and paint the area. BTW, a specialized plumber, who will not provide one-stop shopping like we do, is more likely to leave you with a hole in your drywall, maybe with the cut piece of drywall screwed back in place. Instead, we’ll leave you with a fully-restored wall – mudded, taped, properly-textured, and painted.
Water Shut-offs
Ever notice those hard-to-reach faucet handles behind your toilets, beneath your sinks, or in various places in your unfinished basement? Sometimes they’re handy if you want to shut-off the water to a particular fixture, but not shut-off all the water in the house. Well, those can drip, too, and Fix St Louis can fix and replace them. Folks seem to like it when we offer to replace them with the new ones that have a lever that just needs a quarter turn to shut it off, instead of turning a circular handle round-and-round-and-round.
Look, we get it. “Faucets that don’t drip” is not the reason for the season. We reluctantly acknowledge that Mariah Carey wouldn’t have gone platinum with “All I Want for Christmas is a Faucet that Doesn’t Drip.” But after all the holiday craziness is all over, and you get around to it, give Fix St Louis a call. You deserve a few silent nights.
Dr Steve
Fix St Louis
314-434-4100