Stuff to Think About When Buying a new Bathroom Faucet

Buying a new bathroom faucet is probably not the most important decision you'll ever make.  I mean we'ere not talking about a car, a house, or possible even your spouse (ha, ha).  Even still there are a few things you want to consider before buying the first faucet you see.

Most faucets these days are made of solid brass, well the inside of them(the guts) anyway.  If you have a some pretty hard water, this is the best kind to have anyway.  Solid brass is very good at resisting calcifaction and corrosion, and because of this solid brass faucets are often more expensive.  If your looking at faucets and you notice one is more expensive than the other and you can't figure out why,  nine times out of ten this is the reason.
In the middle of faucet types is Zinc Die cast taps, which are reasonably sturdy, but will need to be replaced after a period of time. And then at the bottom of the barrel is the ever popular plastic faucet.  These are the bottom of the line faucets that you will find in many apartment buildings.

 Probably the most important part of choosing a faucet for your bathroom with the concern of wasting your time returning them before you get the right one.  You must get one that fits the amount of holes in your sink as well as knowing how far apart they are.  Most sinks have two or three holes while most faucets need two, one for the hot and one for cold water.  If your sink has three holes and you only need two, that is fine.  As long as you have more holes than you need, everything should be fine.

If your going to be replacing the faucet anyway, it is fairly easy to remove the faucet to see how many holes are in your sink.  Make sure you turn off the shut-off valves under your sink, then simply unscrew the clamps on the hot and cold pipes which clamp the faucet to the sink.  Now you should be home free.  If you have any  questions about this procedure, you can check out our article on replacing your bathroom faucet or right a comment here and we will do our best to answer your question.

Installing the new Bathroom Faucet

Ok. Now its on to the most rewarding part of this segment.  Installing our brand new awesome, beautiful bathroom faucet.  Well it might be that glamorous, but after all the hard work, it might feel that way.  First we clean up the area where our new bathroom faucet will go and make sure our new faucet will fit in the sink with the same amount of holes in the sink as are required for our chosen faucet.

You might want to follow the instructions that came with your new faucet for this step, but I will supply some pointers to make it that much easier.  Your faucet like the drain assembly will most likely come with all the parts you need for it assembled on the faucet already.

Remove the big plastic nuts as they will need to be put back on from under the sink to hold the faucet in place.  Your new faucet will probably come with a plastic washer that surrounds the base of the faucet.  It is probably a good idea to put some silicon sealant or plumbers putty around the base of the faucet.  There are not many leaks than can occur here, but you don't want water getting under the sink through the holes made for the faucet.  Insert the faucet into the sink.  You should be able to leave the faucet laying there while you go back under the sink unless it is very top heavy, but if not you might need some extra hands to hold it in place while you put on the plastic nuts under the sink.

Tighten the plastic nuts under the sink.  You should probably only tighten these by hand unless your instructions say different.  There is no need to make this too tight.

Next connect the plastic water hoses under the sink to the copper piping on the new faucet.  You might run into a little problem here.  Your plastic hoses might not reach your new faucet, but don't fret.  You can buy these hoses at any local hardware store.  They look like the picture over to the right.

Tighten the metal nuts from water hoses onto the copper pipes on the faucet.  These need to have a fairly tight seal because there will be constant water pressure going through these hoses once you turn the water back on.  One thing to note here is that you should not bend (increase resistance) on the plastic water hoses any more than is required.  For instance, cut the plastic hoses to the proper length rather than bending them to fit to the faucets copper pipes.  To much bending of these hoses could cause them to snap out of the copper pipe at the bottom where they connect to the water inlet valves, which will result in a lot of water on the bathroom floor.  This coincidently will result in a very expensive flood repair bill, if you happen to not be at home when they snap out.

Well that should just about do it.  I do have a couple of things to say about installing the drain plug so I will save the last post.  If you have any questions about this part of the installation, please ask in the form of a comment here.  Until next time, you can find a wide assortment of bathroom faucets on our website at TheKitchenFaucet.com