Today I’m going to show you how to replace a faucet. I’ve got my new faucet ready to go in. Those are the nuts that go on the bottom. I’m going to reuse the existing pop-out so I’m just going to unscrew these. Some of these unscrew, some of them don’t. If it does, that makes it a lot easier. I also got my new supply lines. This is 3/8″ x 1/2 “. Get this thing out. These are compression fittings; little bit better than what’s in here already. I’ll bring you down here and show you. It’s got these old-style supply lines which are pretty prone to breaking and such. They can just go on you one day in the middle of the night. They are pretty common and they do work.
Go ahead and turn off my water. Then I’ll open the faucet up top and just make sure that there’s no water coming out, Looks like not, so we’re good there. What I have here is a basin wrench, a pretty handy tool for getting underneath here. You can flip it one way to tighten it and the other way to loosen it, whichever you need. It just allows you a little bit of a reach to get up in the areas that can be difficult. Some of these old styles, the nice thing about them is they pretty much just can be hand-loosened, that’s why I don’t even need to use the basin wrench.
Loosen up supply lines; there’s going to some water there that’ll drop out. Same on the other side; going to loosen it up real good. Sorry, not the most interesting thing to look at. That one’s pretty tight. Not the easiest angle to get in there [inaudible: 02:25]. If you have a paint tray or something that you can put down below, that’ll minimize the amount of cleanup that you have to do later. I just got a rag, so I’m just going to use that. Let’s see; make sure it’s recording for you.
Again, it’s going to drip some water out when I pull this off; the water that’s trapped in the supply line. Then this portion of the supply line down here at the angle stop, I can just take off with my Leatherman. That’ll create tension. Again, there’s going to be a bunch of water trapped in this supply line. I’ll just angle it onto my rag, or if you had a paint tray down there or a can. Same with the other side; loosen that up. Again, there’s going to be some water trapped in there, so just try to angle it onto my rag. Then we got a little more of the . . . and that’s up top. This is an old plastic faucet, and in a way, they’re nice in that how it comes apart. It’s pretty easy. Some of the other faucets have a small, little, tiny neck and it’s a little trickier; you have to use your basin wrench on those and that’s awkward. These wing nuts are nice and big, it’s easy to get a hold of.
This one is rather a tiny bit tougher. You’ll run into some where they’re really tough, where you’ve got to use the basin wrench pretty much all the way. This one went pretty good. I’m going to take you up top. Pull the faucet off already, but anyway, it just pulled right up from the seat where it was and off.
We want to clean up this area a little bit. Take your rag . . . if you have some sand paper, it’s a good idea to sand this down a little bit because sometimes the profile of the new faucet is a little bit smaller. I may have to come back later with [inaudible: 06:10]. Also, this counter top may be getting refinished; will be a multi-spec treatment on it. It’s tired, so I don’t really have to worry about it. If you weren’t going to be doing anything, cultured marble is the same material all the way through so you can actually sand it down, and then they sell a clear coat-type deal that you can put over it or polish. That’s another story.
To keep this from leaking, what you’re going to want to do is add a little plumber’s putty. That plumber’s putty has gotten a little dry so I’ll mix a little water into it so that it’ll work better. Plumber’s putty; just want to break off a bit, and I’m going to get a little water in my hand because it’s a little dry. Then just rub it like Play-Doh; make a circle with it. What we’re going to do is wrap it around each of our holes, just a thin amount all the way around to make this good. You could just flatten it down a bit because the faucet itself is going to squeeze and flatten it down. There we go along here. I like to do it separately around each hole, that way if you do have a leak from the faucet, you can determine more which hole it’s coming out of, can more indicate whether it’s from a neck or whether it’s from one of the cartridges, and then isolate the hot side from the cold side; just isolate in each area so that in the future if you get a leak, you’ll be able to . . . it’ll be easier for you to determine where your leak is coming from. Pushing this all down. Let’s get some more.
I probably should get the new plumber’s putty; this is a little bit too dry but it’ll still work for our purposes. It’s been in the pot shop for a whole summer out here so it’s just surviving, nut it’s going to work. Again, just flattening all of this down. Plumber’s putty just acts as a seal between two different materials; it doesn’t dry and it doesn’t shrink, it just stays there. Keeps water from going down those areas. We’ll actually want to move . . . put it across all the sides also so that we’ve got each area isolated now. You want to put it across here also, that way if you splash some water on the counter, it doesn’t go down inside there. We’re just blocking it and sealing any water out. Once we install our faucet, it’s going to squeeze it down as we put the nuts on and compress it against the plumber’s putty, which is going to act as a gasket; the thing that keeps the water from going down there if there’s any splashed on the counter. As we tighten our faucet down, then we’ll remove any excess.
Our new faucet, it’s got a pop-up pull. We have to remove that little piece to gain access to the pop-up pull. I guess some faucets don’t have a pop- up, but that why it comes with this part up here. Just pull the plug out. Right there, the little plug was in there, and we just pulled that out. Then go ahead and insert your faucet over and feed your pop-up rod through the back. You may have to lift it up a little bit from inside, and then we can re attach the screw nuts. Thread this on. There we go. I’ll bring you down here [inaudible: 11:38] tighten this thing down. I’m going to just thread them. I’m just holding the faucet steady with my left hand as I tighten this with my right hand. [inaudible: 11:59].
The nice thing about these is it’s mostly just hand-tightened. There are some times where you need to tighten it down with your basin wrench. You just want to be careful not to snap the wings off of these plastic nuts, which is pretty easy to do. The other thing is you want to be careful not to strip these. They’re plastic, if you strip them, you’re [inaudible: 12:30]. Maybe you can reuse the old one from the old faucet anyway. We’re just going to tighten this up real good. As you can see up here, it’s starting to squeeze the plumber’s putty out, so we just want to keep tightening it down until the faucet seems really good.
Let me get my basin wrench and set to tighten. Let me show you using the basin wrench. What you do is just clip this around one of the wings which is easier sometimes said than done. There’s not much room in there. I may have to turn this a bit more with my hand just to get it in there. Clip one end around the wing, and now you can turn it. Sorry about that. Again, just tightening these up. As you can see, it was pretty loose. We’ll come back over to the other side and do the same thing. Tight quarters. This is where the basin wrench just comes in nice and handy. It’s nice to be able to reach up there. Some of them actually have an extension on this end so you can get a lot longer reach if you needed to. This seems to work out pretty good for me. There’s some nuts where you’ll have to hold this backside with the teeth on a little bit with one finger, but it’s still a good tool. It allows you to get in there where you need to get. Good, nice and tight.
Next is the supply lines. I showed you earlier, 1/2 ” x 3/8″ on this particular setup. Again, making sure we’re not going to cross-thread these. It’s a lot easier to attach it at the faucet first. This is where the basin wrench, again, you may have to hold it with your finger so that it grabs it. Sometimes you can . . . sometimes it’ll grab it on its own, but other times it’ll slip a little bit. Then you have to just use your other finger a little bit to hold it in there better. Nice, tight quarters make it a little tricky. Come on, buddy. I think we’re okay on that side. That’s the hot side; the right side for the cold side. Same thing; as good as I can with my hand first, and then use the basin wrench to tighten up the rest. These you just want them 1/4 -turn past tight, and then we’ll leak test it after, once we get them all nice and tight. You want to avoid squeezing these portions; otherwise this’ll start leaking from here. Now to the angle stops.
There are some situations I’ve seen where it was plumbed backwards, where hot was on the right side instead of being on the left side. If that was the case, you could cross your lines over here to fix that. For ours, this one’s right. Cold on the right like it should be, and hot-s on the left like it should be. Again, being careful and make sure these aren’t cross threaded, and then just tighten these down with pliers; same thing, avoiding squeezing up here, as well as making sure we’re just 1/4 -turn past tight. You want to keep going while it’s loose, and then when it gets nice and tight resistance, we’ll go just 1/4 -turn past tight. That’s the right amount of force; 1/4 -past tight. These compression fittings are a little more forgiving, but when it comes to a copper fitting, [inaudible: 19:36] 1/4 -turn past tight.
These compression fittings, you don’t need any Teflon tape. [inaudible: 20:07] good. You don’t want any cross threads or anything; want it to be nice and straight just like it should be. 1/4 -turn past tight and we’re good. We’re going to turn on our water.
When you turn the water on, you want to have your lines open because there’s going to be some air in the supply lines, and we want that to bleed out. Then just slowly turn on each line, and of course, you’re going to listen for any leaks as well; listen and feel for any leaks. Open your line, and then the cold side, same thing. That was a little faster than I would’ve liked but there we go. I’ll come back and clean up this excess plumber’s putty.
We’re going to field test now for any leaks. I’m going to take my gloves off, and then at each of the fittings just feel around for any moisture here, here, here, and then up top at the supply lines. We’re all nice and dry. That’s good. Coming back up top, we’re going to want to turn our water off. Then this excess plumber’s putty, you can just take a flat-edge screwdriver and just go around the edge and remove all of the excess putty so that it’s nice and clean. This stuff is gnarly in that if you happen to catch it with a rag by accident and then you go to clean something else, you’re going to wind up rubbing this stuff into whatever else it is that you’re cleaning. You don’t really want that. We’re going to remove all the excess. Unplug our drain. We’re all set. Nice new, brand new faucet and a nice new pop-up.