Dripping Faucet: Why It Drips, What It Costs You, and When to Repair vs. Replace

A faucet that drips is easy to tune out. It is also the only leak in your house that announces itself every second, and it costs more than most homeowners assume. This guide covers how much water a drip actually wastes, why faucets in Houston fail the way they do, how to figure out which of the four faucet types you have, what a DIY repair involves and where it goes wrong, and a clear rule for deciding between repair and replacement.

If you would rather skip the parts run, call or text (713) 409-7176. The visit to diagnose it is free.

What a Drip Costs

The EPA estimates that one faucet dripping once per second wastes about 3,000 gallons a year. That is roughly 180 showers, poured down the drain for nothing. Two drips per second doubles it. A faucet with a steady thin stream, the kind that no longer fully shuts, can run through 10 times that.

Houston bills water and sewer on the same meter reading, so every wasted gallon is charged twice. A drip on the hot side also throws away the gas or electricity that heated it. If your bill has crept up and you cannot see why, a dripping faucet is one of the first things to rule out; the high water bill guide walks through the rest of the list.

Why Faucets Drip

Every faucet has one job: press something soft or smooth against something hard well enough to stop water under pressure. A drip means that seal has worn, cracked, scaled over, or lost the spring tension that holds it closed.

In Houston the usual culprit is hard water. The dissolved calcium and magnesium in our supply leave a crust on brass seats, rubber washers, cartridge seals, and the tiny springs under a ball faucet. Scale keeps the seal from seating flat, grinds the rubber each time the handle turns, and eventually seizes the moving parts. Our guide to Houston hard water explains why faucets, water heaters, and valves here all tend to fail on the early side of their rated life.

High water pressure makes it worse. Anything over 80 psi, which is common at Houston meters, pushes harder on every seal and shortens its life.

The Four Faucet Types and What Fails in Each

Not sure which you have? A handle you crank down is compression. A single handle on a dome is ball. A handle that turns a quarter turn, or two handles that feel the same from fully off to fully on, is cartridge. A single handle on a tall straight cylinder is almost always ceramic disc. If the faucet carries a brand name on the base, that brand’s website will identify the model and the replacement part.

The DIY Repair, and Where It Goes Wrong

A cartridge swap on a common brand is a reasonable afternoon project. The outline is the same for most faucets.

1. Close the shutoff valves under the sink. Turn both clockwise until they stop, then open the faucet to confirm the water is off. If a valve will not turn or will not fully close, stop here. Forcing an old shutoff is how a drip becomes a flood.
2. Plug the drain so screws and clips do not disappear.
3. Remove the handle. Pry off the decorative cap, remove the screw beneath it, and lift the handle. Some brands use a small set screw on the side instead.
4. Remove the retaining nut or clip that holds the cartridge in the body.
5. Pull the cartridge straight up. Note which way it faced. If it will not move, scale has seized it. Brands sell a puller tool for this; pliers tend to break the cartridge off inside the body.
6. Install the exact matching cartridge in the same orientation, replace the clip or nut, reinstall the handle, and open the shutoffs slowly.
7. Check for drips at the spout and at the base for a day. A new drip at the base means an O-ring or the body seal, not the cartridge.

For a compression faucet, the steps are similar but the part is a washer on the end of the stem plus the seat it presses against. If the seat is pitted, a new washer will drip again within weeks. Seats can be dressed or replaced, but on an older faucet this is often the point where replacement makes more sense.

Where it goes wrong:

• The cartridge is seized and breaks off, leaving the lower half in the faucet body.
• A stem or screw strips because scale welded it in place.
• The shutoff valve under the sink will not close, or closes and then starts leaking from its own stem once disturbed. This is common on the old multi-turn valves in 1980s and 1990s Houston homes.
• The wrong cartridge goes in. Several brands sell look-alike parts that fit but do not seal.

If you end up with a leak under the cabinet instead of a drip at the spout, our guide on leaks under the kitchen sink covers how to tell whether it is the faucet, the supply line, the shutoff, or the drain.

Repair or Replace?

A repair is almost always cheaper on the day. The reason replacement so often wins in Houston is that the faucet rarely fails alone. By the time a 15-year-old faucet drips, the shutoffs are stiff, the supply lines are at the end of their life, and the finish is pitted by hard water. Replacing all of it at once costs about the same as two separate repair visits and resets the clock on everything under the sink.

If hard water is shortening the life of every fixture in the house, that is a separate conversation about water softening and filtration, which protects faucets, the water heater, and appliances together.

What Replacement Involves

A faucet swap is more than the faucet. Expect the job to include:

• New supply lines. Braided stainless, replacing the old plastic or chrome lines.
• New shutoff valves if the existing ones are multi-turn, stiff, or leaking. Quarter-turn ball-style shutoffs are the current standard; the plumbing valve guide explains the difference.
• Matching the mounting holes. Sinks have one, two, three, or four holes. A single-handle faucet on a three-hole sink needs a deck plate, and a wide-spread faucet needs three holes.
• The drain assembly on a bathroom sink, since the pop-up usually comes with the new faucet and the old one rarely matches.
• Clearing the cabinet and checking the P-trap while everything is apart.

When to Call

Call Hugo Plumbing when:

• The shutoff under the sink will not close, or leaks once you touch it.
• The cartridge or stem is seized or broken off in the body.
• The drip is on a wall-mounted or shower faucet, where the valve body is inside the wall.
• The faucet drips and also leaks at the base, under the sink, or from the sprayer hose.
• You want the faucet replaced and the shutoffs and supply lines done at the same time.

Faucet repair and replacement are priced on site because the brand and the failure type decide the parts and the time. The visit to find the problem is free, with no trip charge or diagnostic fee, and every job is a flat written price before work starts. The $30 coupon applies to any repair or replacement, and licensed master plumbers (MPL 41319) answer 24/7 at (713) 409-7176 through our faucet repair line.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much water does a dripping faucet waste?

More than it looks. The EPA puts a faucet dripping once per second at roughly 3,000 gallons a year, which is about 180 showers worth of water. A faster drip or two dripping faucets doubles that. In Houston, where water and sewer are billed together, the drip shows up on both halves of the bill, and a hot-side drip also wastes the gas or electricity that heated the water.

Why does my faucet drip after I turn it off?

The part that seals the water is worn or scaled. On a compression faucet that is a rubber washer and the brass seat it presses against. On a cartridge, ball, or ceramic disc faucet it is the cartridge, the seals under it, or the springs and rubber seats in the body. Houston hard water leaves mineral scale on all of these, which is why faucets here tend to drip sooner than the same faucet would in a soft-water city.

Can I fix a dripping faucet myself?

Often, if the faucet is a common brand and the shutoff valves under the sink still work. Close the shutoffs, plug the drain, pull the handle, and replace the cartridge or the washer and seat with the exact matching part. It goes wrong when the cartridge is seized by scale, a stem or screw strips, or the old shutoff under the sink will not close and starts leaking itself. If any of those happen, stop and call.

Should I repair or replace a dripping faucet?

Repair when the faucet is under about 10 years old, a name brand with parts available, and this is its first problem. Replace when it is builder grade with no parts support, the finish is pitted or peeling, the base or spout leaks as well as the spout dripping, or it has already been repaired once. Replacement is also the answer when the shutoff valves under the sink are failing, since those get replaced at the same time.

What does it cost to fix a dripping faucet in Houston?

Faucet repair is priced on site because the brand and the failure type decide the parts and the time. The visit to diagnose it is free, there is no trip charge, and you get a flat written price before any work starts. For the Houston market, a simple cartridge or washer repair generally lands at the low end of a plumber’s range and a full replacement depends mostly on the faucet you pick.

If your faucet won’t quit, call Hugo.