Mamba Drainage Services
Faucet Repair Vancouver
A dripping kitchen faucet throws away about eleven litres of water a day and leaves a rust stain on the sink while it does it. A sprayer hose weeping inside the cabinet will rot the cabinet floor while you stand two feet away making dinner.
Cartridges, O-rings, valve seats, supply lines, sprayer hoses, angle stops and full replacements. Cartridges for every major brand ride on the truck.
Four things go wrong, and only one of them needs a new faucet
Almost every faucet leak comes down to one of four failure points. A worn cartridge, which is the small replaceable part inside the valve body that controls flow and temperature. A damaged O-ring at the spout swivel. A corroded valve seat the cartridge can no longer seal against. Or a failed supply line. A cartridge swap fixes roughly 85 percent of the leak calls we take across Vancouver. Most of the rest are O-rings, and the occasional faucet is genuinely past it.
Kitchen work is about 60 percent of our fixture calls. The pull down sprayer hoses on a Moen Arbor, a Delta Trinsic or a Kohler Simplice give out around the six to eight year mark. The lining cracks inside the protective sleeve and drips quietly under the sink, and nobody sees it until the cabinet floor has gone. By the time you can smell mildew you are replacing cabinetry, not a hose. Opening that cupboard once a quarter catches it every single time.
Cartridge failure has a signature. A slow drip from the spout with the handle off. A lever that will not seat closed. Hot and cold that have lost their range. Or a temperature swing when somebody flushes a toilet at the other end of the house. Moen 1225 is the cartridge we replace most often here, and it is in nearly every Moen kitchen and bath faucet from 2010 on. The Delta RP19804 ball assembly is second.
Bathrooms fail the same way, more slowly. Less use means the O-rings dry out rather than wear out, and sediment collects at the aerator. The other regular bathroom call is the pop up drain, where the lift rod corrodes or the linkage lets go and the stopper will not seal or will not open. We rebuild those with a fresh lift rod and ball rod assembly rather than replacing the whole drain.
Tub spouts and shower trim. When water leaves the spout and the head at the same time, the diverter inside the spout has failed. That is a spout swap, plus a drop elbow if the pipe in the wall is corroded. We carry chrome, brushed nickel, oil rubbed bronze and matte black so the trim matches on the first visit. Shower trim, meaning the visible plate, lever and head, is a separate item from the cartridge inside the wall, and re-trimming an existing valve is one of the cheapest visual updates in a bathroom.
What is on the van. Moen 1225 and 1222, Delta RP46074 Multichoice and RP19804 ball assemblies, Kohler GP1062417 and GP500520, Grohe 46374 thermostatic and 46586 pressure balance, Hansgrohe 92730 ceramic disc, Brizo 134399, and Symmons Temptrol for the heritage houses. Roughly nine in ten faucet repairs across Greater Vancouver close on the first visit because the part is already in the truck. Beyond cartridges we carry sprayer hoses, braided stainless supply lines, aerator screens, P-traps and trap arms, quarter turn angle stops and soap dispenser pumps.
Nine faucet tips for Vancouver homeowners
- Put braided stainless on every supply line. Rubber lines let go without warning, and they pick their moment. You are away, it is the middle of the night, and the basement is filling.
- Swap multi turn angle stops for quarter turn ball valves. A quarter turn closes fully in one movement, which is what you want during a leak. Old brass multi turn stops often will not close all the way and drip even when you think they are shut. Half the under sink leaks we attend are the stop, not the faucet.
- Clean the aerators twice a year. Unscrew the screen at the end of the spout, soak it in white vinegar, scrub it with an old toothbrush and put it back. Full flow returns and the cartridge stops working against the restriction.
- Stop cranking the handle. Cartridges are built to seal under hand tight pressure. Forcing the lever wears the seat several times faster and turns a cartridge that should have lasted fifteen years into one that lasts five.
- Photograph the brand and model now, while nothing is wrong. A picture of the under sink trim and the spout means we can identify the cartridge before we arrive. Most Moen and Delta faucets carry a model number etched on the base or stamped on the supply tubes.
- Hard water spots on every fixture mean it is worth softening the whole house. Vancouver water is medium soft, but mineral buildup still wears cartridges out early. A softener pays back across every fixture in the building, not just the one that is annoying you.
- Check the cabinet floor under the kitchen sink every quarter. Pull down sprayer hoses leak slowly and quietly. Once you can smell the cabinet, mould is already in it. Full cabinet replacements in Vancouver kitchens usually trace back to a hose nobody looked at.
- Know which faucets are worth rebuilding. Mid tier Moen, Delta and Kohler bodies are designed to run past 25 years with periodic cartridge swaps. Big box faucets are not, and their bodies wear out faster than their cartridges. Rebuild the good ones, replace the cheap ones.
- Get the house down to 65 to 70 PSI. City pressure runs 80 to 110 PSI in a lot of Vancouver, particularly downtown and the West End. High pressure shortens the life of every faucet in the house, and a pressure reducing valve pays that back across all of them.
Phones answered 24/7
A drip is a cartridge, not a new faucet
Describe the fixture and the symptom on the phone and you get a quote for the repair before anybody comes out. Ryan answers, and mid tier Moen, Delta and Kohler bodies are worth two or three cartridge swaps before replacement makes any sense.
Faucet repair FAQ, Vancouver
Yes. We carry the Moen 1222, 1225, 1255 and 1256 single handle cartridges plus the Delta RP19804 ball assembly and the RP46074 Multichoice. Pre-2000 models are sometimes obsolete, and when the part no longer exists we say so and recommend replacing the faucet instead of chasing it.
Either. If you buy the unit we install it and bill the labour. If we supply it we work with Moen, Delta, Kohler, Grohe, Hansgrohe and Brizo, all of which stand behind their warranties. We do not push cheap big box brands, because we are the ones who get called back to them.
Stop forcing it. Sediment has almost certainly seized the cartridge, and muscling the handle cracks the cartridge body and turns a small job into a valve replacement. Call us. We have a cartridge puller that gets a seized cartridge out without damaging the valve body.
Yes. Pull down sprayer hoses are a replaceable part on Moen, Delta, Kohler and most of the major brands. It is an under sink job and the faucet does not come off the counter.
Almost always the cartridge. A swap restores the seal in the off position. Our shower repair page covers how that is done through the front trim plate without breaking tile.
We stock the most common Brizo, Grohe and Hansgrohe cartridges. Tell us the brand on the phone and we confirm the part is on the van before we book you, rather than finding out in your kitchen.
One year workmanship warranty on Mamba labour. Cartridges and bodies carry the manufacturer warranty, which is lifetime on Moen cartridges, lifetime on Kohler bodies, lifetime overall on Delta, 5 years on Grohe, 10 years on Hansgrohe and lifetime on Brizo. Paperwork gets emailed when the job closes.
Three candidates. A failed angle stop, which is the most common by a distance. A failed supply line, usually a cracked rubber hose. Or the O-ring at the base of the spout swivel. A short diagnostic tells you which, and it is a repair far more often than it is a new faucet.
Yes. We work with property managers and strata councils across Metrotown, Kerrisdale and the downtown towers. Full general liability and WCB coverage, and certificates of service emailed for the strata records.
Usually not. Nine times out of ten it is aerator buildup, and soaking the aerator in white vinegar brings most of the flow back for nothing. We do that on any service call if you ask. A whole fixture replacement only makes sense when the cartridge is obsolete or the finish is shedding.
24/7 EMERGENCY DISPATCH
Water where it should not be?
Ryan picks up. Live dispatch, and you get a real arrival window on the call.