if you give a seth a maintenance project, and that project comes with a puzzle, he ends up cleaning a lot of things
Our kitchen faucet has been dripping. Last time it was behaving funny (sticky handle, drips) I pulled apart the handle and cleaned it up. Recently, our town informed us[1] the filters at the local water treatment have been replaced and we should be seeing less calcium issues, so on Saturday while making decaf in waves[2] I redetermined what allen key I needed[3] and pulled the assembly. I shoulda taken photos: it was an absurd amount of scale in there.
Cleaning that was pretty satisfying: it is Good to dive into the details and intricacies of something you use many times a day and it is also Good to care for that thing in its intricacies. I soaked bits in vinegar, brushed other bits with nylon or brass material depending, and got it nicely cleaned up. Once reassembled, I tried the faucet and it was... maybe better? The handle operation was, at least, but we still had drips.
I then started to figure out how to pull apart the pull-down spray head to see if there was an issue there. It wasn't immediately obvious how to pull it to pieces (in a way that let you reverse that), so I left it to soak in vinegar in case it was scale here too and did some googling. I have no idea what brand my faucet is, so it wasn't exactly a targeted search but I was able to see how generally these spray heads need their mode toggle popped off, the aerator removed and then somehow the spray nipples plate can be removed so the whole thing can slide out of its faux brushed stainless cone housing. I got as far as removing the aerator and the spray toggle. For kicks, I reattached it without that big plastic switch and: yeah okay, water was squirting with surprising force out of the plunger rod the toggle manipulated. I was sure then I'd have to fully pull apart the thing, but the only clue as to how this may be removed was a listing I found of little plastic tools for unscrewing certain faucet heads. But those all had six or more teeth, and this faucet had what looked like the world's largest philips head screw with a massive hole right in the center. Having to unscrew it made sense in an assembly way, though, so I got some (bad[4]) measurements and 60 seconds later had the world's most basic 3D model of something that maybe might possible unscrew a thing I thought could hopefully unscrew.
I pushed it to my printer, came back 20 minutes later and. Bed empty. "that's weird"; sent it again and babysat it as it went through its calibration steps and watched as it went to drop it's priming line and: no extrusion. We have a clog. Cleaning part two? three? It was a project for sunday
Sunday I went through my printer's instructions to unjam the hot end, including a cold pull[5] method where you remove the hot end and heat up an allen wrench to anchor into the filament. In the end what cleared it was dispersing the carbon in enough molten filament to get it to extrude out. This sounds cool but what it really was was sticking a pin up the hot nozzle and wiggling it around, alternated with short extrusion commands. An hour of fiddling later, I could print again 😌
Once printed[6], my tool worked beautifully. I was able to give it a nice steady turn with a pair of pliers and work free the nozzle plate, just as I had hoped. I knew it was leaking from the spray toggle switch, so once I was in, I further pulled apart the assembly to take a good look at how the plunger that the switch lifts seals. The world's smallest rubber washer is in there, and it is torn.
Searching around some more, it looks like I might be able to pick up a small variety back of faucet o rings and washers that potentially will work well enough in this spot. None of them are shaped exactly like this one, but they seem to be the correct OD and ID and hopefully will stay in the correct position. I guess I'm visiting the hardware store this week; otherwise we'll have to replace the whole sprayer head for one tiny seal, which sucks.
If you give a mouse a cookie...
via facebook post, something I am continually amused by--if it works it works but also I do feel like there are better information dissemination options. Or at least ones less married to whims outside of control ↩︎
Em wanted iced, I wanted hot, so aeropress was the method of choice--one with only half the liquid for pressing directly onto a cup of ice ↩︎
2.5mm, future me ↩︎
man I really gotta just pony up the money for even a half decent set of calipers ↩︎
the relativity here is so funny; the nozzle is as hot as boiling water ↩︎
and reprinted; the first one was a little too thick to mesh correctly ↩︎