Faucet Repair in Freedom, CA

Usually a repair, not a replacement

A dripping faucet is nearly always a worn cartridge or a set of hardened O-rings. Both are inexpensive parts. If your faucet is decent quality and you like it, there is generally no reason to replace the whole fixture.

Plenty of places will sell you a new one anyway, because it is a bigger ticket. If a rebuild will do it, I will rebuild it.

Why fixtures wear out fast here

Water in the Pajaro Valley and across Santa Cruz County is hard. That has a specific effect on faucets: dissolved minerals come out of solution and build as scale on every surface the water touches.

Inside a cartridge, that scale sits on the sealing faces and in the threads. It stops the seal closing cleanly, which is your drip, and it makes the handle stiff and gritty to turn. In the aerator it collects until the flow drops off and the stream splits. That white crust around the base of the spout is the visible version of what is happening inside.

It is also why a faucet that lasted fifteen years at a previous house might last seven here.

What I do

• Drips from the spout — cartridge or seat and spring replacement
• Leaks at the base of the handle — usually the O-rings underneath
• Stiff or grinding handles — scaled cartridge, cleaned or replaced
• Weak flow — aerator descale or replacement, and if it is only the hot side, that usually points further back into the system
• Leaks underneath the sink — supply connections, angle stops that have seized
• Full replacement where the fixture is genuinely done or you want a different one

I will also swap out angle stops while I am under there if yours are the original ones that no longer turn. It is a small job at the time and it means that the next time something goes wrong you can shut off that one fixture instead of the whole house.

Things worth knowing

A dripping faucet is not just annoying — a steady drip runs to a few hundred gallons a year, and on the hot side you are paying to heat all of it.

If scale is a recurring theme in your house — spotted glasses out of the dishwasher, crust on the shower head, a water heater that did not last — a water softener addresses the cause rather than the symptom. It is not the right call for everyone, but if you are rebuilding faucets every few years it starts to add up.

Working across Freedom, Watsonville, Aptos, Capitola and Santa Cruz.