Pull out kitchen faucet has gone stiff

[Amanda Ripanykhazova]

For 20-30 years we have had what I thought was a Delta kitchen faucet which seemed to perform reasonably well

It is the one with a button at the top of the pull out part that can switch from the single aerated spray to to wider individual-jets spray.

It has become increasingly stiff / difficult to operate and now mostly is either on full force or off.

Every couple of years I have had to change the pull out part. They either start to leak from their base and send water down the flexi onto the cabinet floor. Or they stop switching from aerated spray to multi-jet. Recently they have been ARRIVING in non-changing mode, so I reject them!

When I tried looking into this I seem to have discovered that my unit is a Houzer model 361, - a company I had never heard of! And when I called Houzer to see if there was any maintenance on this faucet, they said they had bought the company from Tapco in 2018 and would I please cal tapco for assistance. Some hopes!

Does anyone know of a cure for the stiffness please? It isnt caused by hard water in our locality and I am wondering if this stiffness in the faucet could be caused by the increasing cheapness of the components in the pullout bit?

The only thing to add to this description is that one time i had to change the pull out chinese bit, there wasnt a cheap one on ebay so I had to buy some almost equally cheap one made in New York, - WHICH WAS EVEN STIFFER! (So I kept it as a spare)

[Dean Hoffman]

Could you get some dish washing soap on a moveable part? Vegetable oil? Maybe some spray lubricant like WD-40?

[Ed P]

I understand the problem. If I pull on my hose a lot, it gets stiff too.

After 30 years, maybe time for a new faucet set that works even better.

[Amanda Ripanykhazova]

are all the bits that mater sealed inside?

[Amanda Ripanykhazova]

it seems to be still a current model? Houzer 361

[Amanda Ripanykhazova]

And the answer might be to turn the pressure down a bit on the water input valve?

[trader_4]

Soak it in hot vinegar. Start off with it hot, not boiling, then just let it sit. Could rewarm it a few times in the microwave, without the sprayer of course. Brush the head to remove any visible deposits. They get mineral deposit build up. But it's old and if that doesn't work, it's time for a new faucet.

[Amanda Ripanykhazova]

Thanks but I have never had any luck in the past either putting metal things in microwaves or getting things contaminated with vinegar out of the clean water supply! If the solution is that extreme and requires that much dismantling, I'd probably prefer to replace after trying fiddling with the pressure a bit?

[micky]

He meant to just warm the vinegar. "without the sprayer of course" he said.

You may have a miraculous infinitely dilutable vinegar supply.

Yes, unless you put the whole kitchen sink and kitchen counter in the vinegar, you'd have to remove the faucet, then put it back, then remove it again if you have to replace it. What a pain.

If the stiff part is moving the handle to the side or up and down, it's just the top of the faucet and you could remove that, take out the plastic and rubber parts, and soak the rest.

I've never understood what about the faucet is stiff, so I don't understand how the pressure is related.

Barely related story: I had a Delta one-handle faucet in the kitchen,

30 years old, that dripped all the time. Replaced "washers", ball, Delta sent me a free kit, used the kit, nothing worked so I was going to buy a new faucet, once I decided what I wanted. Went to Walmart for something and walked to Home Depot to shop for a faucet, took shortcut through wide grassy depression, 50' wide, used for runoff when raining, and found in the long grass a Delta kitchen faucet. Only piece of trash or junk in the very nice grass. Went home, realized the sprayer hose was missing. Went back 2 days later to the same grassy ditch, looked a little and found, almost hidden in the long grass, the sprayer hose. Put it in and it has worked just fine. Looks just like the first one but the first one didn't have a sprayer.

[trader_4]

Some people are just beyond help, putting a faucet sprayer end into vinegar is extreme. She better find all that vinegar and get it out of the house.

[Amanda Ripanykhazova]

OK Great! I looked in the grassy knoll near the book suppository and sadly no luck!

I'm beginning to think it might well be something to do with water pressure as that was a problem in the past with the cold feed on a water hook-up on a Malber washer/dryer .

But I'm really beginning to wonder whether i really need a kitchen faucet which needs continuous pull-out spray heads every 1-2 years. This one has started not switching between spray and aerated stream (yet again). And the pressure is so high that it splatters a lot and often pushes the head sideways in the sink on turn-on!