Here is the sentence that sorts almost every kitchen-faucet complaint, and almost no page states it before it starts listing brands to buy: a kitchen faucet doesn't really wear out — its body is a chunk of machined brass or stainless that will outlast the cabinets around it. What wears out is a two-dollar screen at the tip and a valve you can swap in ten minutes. Nearly every "my faucet is shot" is one of exactly two cheap, serviceable parts — the aerator at the end of the spout and the cartridge inside the handle — plus, sometimes, a rubber O-ring. The expensive part, the faucet body you'd pay a plumber to rip out and replace, is almost never the thing that actually failed.
That matters because the two most common symptoms — a faucet that lost its pressure and a faucet that won't stop dripping — feel like a death sentence and get "fixed" with the single most expensive option on the shelf. They shouldn't. So before you diagnose anything, answer one question about what the water is doing:
- Is water not coming out right? Weak, uneven, sputtering, or the spray head just dribbles → you have a FLOW problem: something is restricting the water on its way out — almost always the aerator screen packed with mineral scale (free to clear), the scaled spray-head face, or sediment in the cartridge.
- Is water getting out where it shouldn't? Drips from the spout after you shut it off, weeps around the base, or leaks under the sink → you have a SEALING problem: a seal stopped sealing — the cartridge (spout drip) or an O-ring (base leak). Cheap parts, both.
Two families of problem at opposite ends of the same faucet. Notice what's on neither list: the faucet's age, its brand, or "they just don't make them like they used to." A new faucet fixes none of this any better than the old one — because in your water, it will arrive at the same two problems on the same schedule. Let's take the two families one at a time.
Lost its pressure: it's a restriction, and the first one is free
This is the one that sends the most perfectly good faucets to the landfill, and the first suspect costs nothing to rule out. When the stream weakens or splits and sputters, the water isn't losing pressure inside the wall — it's being choked on its way out, and the usual choke point is the very last thing the water touches: the aerator, the little threaded screen on the tip of the spout. Its whole job is to pass water through a fine mesh, and in hard water that mesh is exactly where dissolved calcium and lime precipitate out and build up, narrowing the openings until the flow is a trickle. Plumbers and repair editors put it plainly: a mineral-clogged aerator is the most common cause of low flow at a single faucet.
How to clear an aerator (the ten-minute, no-cost version)
Do it before you touch anything else, because it's free and it's the answer more often than not:
- Unscrew the aerator from the tip of the spout — usually by hand, turning it toward you (some need a cloth-wrapped pliers for grip; the cloth protects the finish). Note the order the little parts stack in as they come out.
- Look at the screen. If it's furred with white or greenish crust, you've found your problem — that crust is the "lost pressure."
- Soak the parts in white vinegar for roughly 30–60 minutes to dissolve the mineral scale, then scrub the mesh with an old toothbrush and rinse thoroughly.
- Reassemble in the same order and thread it back on. Run the faucet. A strong, even stream returning is the confirmation that scale was the whole problem.
If it's a pull-down or pull-out head
A spray head adds a second place for the same scale to build: the little channels and the spray face on the head itself clog exactly the way the aerator does. Unclip or unscrew the head from the hose and give the face the same vinegar soak. If the flow is fine at the hose but weak or misting at the head, the head is your aerator — descale it, don't replace the faucet.
If cleaning the tip doesn't do it: one side, or both?
When the raw flow is still weak, one distinction saves a lot of guessing: is it weak on both hot and cold, or just one? Weak on one side only almost always points upstream of the faucet — a partly closed shut-off (angle-stop) valve under the sink, a kinked or sediment-filled supply line, or debris in that side's inlet screen — not the faucet at all. Weak on both after the aerator's clean points at the cartridge, which can also clog with grit and choke flow. Either way you're into a few-dollar part or a free valve turn, not a new fixture.
Won't stop dripping: the seal failed, not the faucet
Now the opposite family, and the one that feels most like "it's done": the faucet drips from the spout after you've shut it off, or leaves water pooling around the base of the spout. Mechanically this is almost never a reason to scrap the tool. A single-handle faucet controls water with a cartridge — a valve that turns to line up (or block) the flow — and that cartridge, or the rubber seals around it, is what stops sealing:
- Drips from the spout when the faucet is off → the cartridge. Over years the cartridge wears, or scale scores the surfaces it seals against, and a little water sneaks past. The fix is a replacement cartridge for your specific faucet — often only a few dollars, and on many designs a ten-minute swap with the water shut off. A worn cartridge is the textbook cause of a single-handle spout drip.
- Weeps or pools at the base of the spout → an O-ring. Where the spout swivels on the body, rubber O-rings keep water from escaping. They harden and flatten with age; when one gives up, water seeps out around the base (industry repair guidance pins the large majority of base leaks on worn O-rings, with loose mounting hardware a distant second). An O-ring kit is a few dollars.
- Leak under the sink → a supply-line or hose connection. This one isn't the faucet body either — it's usually a loose or aging supply-line nut or, on a pull-down, the quick-connect on the hose. Tighten or replace the line. (Read the safety section below before you shrug this one off.)
The one villain behind most of both: your water
Here's the synthesis that ties the two families together and that almost no single-symptom guide bothers to draw: the same thing causes most of the flow problems and most of the sealing problems — hard water. The mineral scale that furs up the aerator is the same scale that scores the cartridge and hardens the O-rings. So a chalk-clogged aerator isn't only "the problem" — it's the canary. It's the visible tip of water that is quietly aging every seal and screen in the faucet at once, and doing the same to the appliances downstream of it.
Which is why a brand-new faucet installed on the same hard water arrives at the same trickle and the same drip on the same timeline — you've paid a lot to reset a clock that starts ticking again immediately. Fix the aerator and the cartridge, absolutely; but if you're on hard or well water and this is a recurring fight across your fixtures, the honest long-game fix is upstream, at the water itself. That's a different project — see how water softeners work (and the free fixes people miss there too) and whole-house filtration — but it's the reason your faucet "keeps dying" when it never really does.
What actually failed — and why the repair is so cheap
Line the failure modes up and the pattern is unmistakable. The most common one — a scaled aerator — costs nothing to fix. The next ones — a worn cartridge, a hardened O-ring, a loose supply nut — are a few dollars and a few minutes. The parts that are actually expensive on a faucet — the machined valve body, the finish, the whole assembly you pay a plumber to replace — almost never fail on their own. A faucet is a simple, rugged valve, and simple rugged valves don't die easily. What "dies" is a screen full of chalk and a rubber seal that costs less than lunch.
That's the whole argument of this page. The expensive mistake is reading "weak" or "drips" as "the faucet is finished," and buying a new one — plus, often, a plumber's visit — to fix a problem the old faucet never really had.
Read your symptom
| What it's doing | Most likely cause | First move | New faucet? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weak, uneven, or sputtering stream that got worse over months | Mineral scale clogging the aerator | Unscrew the aerator, soak in vinegar 30–60 min, brush, rinse, reassemble | No |
| Pull-down / pull-out head weak or misting; hose flow is fine | Scaled spray-head face and channels | Detach the head, descale the face same as the aerator | No |
| Still weak with the aerator off, on one side only | Partly closed shut-off valve / supply-line or inlet-screen sediment | Open the angle stop fully; check/flush the supply line and inlet screen | No |
| Flow dropped right after plumbing work | Loosened pipe debris caught in the aerator/cartridge | Pull and rinse the aerator; flush the lines | No |
| Drips from the spout after you shut it off | Worn or scale-scored cartridge | Fit a replacement cartridge for that model (shut water off first) | No — a cartridge |
| Water weeps or pools around the base of the spout | Hardened O-ring (or loose mounting hardware) | Replace the O-rings; snug the mounting nut | No — an O-ring kit |
| Drip returns within a few weeks of a fresh cartridge | Corroded / pitted valve seat in the body | Try one more quality cartridge + O-rings; if it drips again, the body is done | Yes — the body seat is damaged |
| Touchless faucet dead / erratic; solenoid or sensor failed | Electronic control failure (the added-complexity part) | Check batteries/adapter first; then the solenoid — often not worth a deep repair | Maybe |
The leak that actually costs you money
Most of this page is about saving a wallet, not a life — a dripping faucet won't hurt anyone. But there's one honest exception worth stating plainly: the leak that costs real money is not the drip you see at the spout — it's the one under the sink you don't. A slow weep from a supply line or the base runs down into the cabinet, and particleboard soaks it up silently until the floor of the cabinet swells and delaminates and you're repairing casework, not plumbing. So two habits: first, know where your two shut-off (angle-stop) valves are under the sink and that they actually turn — clockwise to close — because the day you have a real burst is the wrong day to discover a seized valve you've never touched. Second, when you find a base or under-sink leak, fix it now, while it's a few-dollar O-ring or a supply nut, not later when it's a cabinet.
When it really is a new faucet
A clogged aerator and a worn cartridge explain the overwhelming majority of "dead" kitchen faucets, but not every one. Treat it as a genuine replacement when:
- The drip comes back within a few weeks of a fresh cartridge. That's the tell that the problem isn't the cartridge — it's the seat, the surface in the body the cartridge presses against, now corroded or pitted. A new cartridge can't seal against a damaged seat, and on most modern faucets that seat is integral to the body, so fixing it means replacing the whole thing. Try one more quality cartridge and O-ring set to be sure; if it still drips, stop throwing parts at it.
- It's old and has multiple symptoms at once — a drip plus visible corrosion, or low flow plus a leak under the sink. One symptom on a faucet under about a decade old is almost always a repair; several symptoms stacking up on an old faucet is the honest replacement case.
- The cartridge is discontinued and unsourceable. On some older or off-brand faucets the specific cartridge simply isn't made anymore. If you genuinely can't buy the part, the repair is off the table and a new faucet is the answer — a good reason to favor a mainstream brand with a lifetime cartridge warranty next time.
- The body is cracked, the spout casting is pitted through, or the finish has worn away and it bothers you. Cosmetics are your call; a cracked body is not — that's a replace.
- A touchless faucet's electronics have failed. The trade-off of the fancy feature is a solenoid, sensor, and battery pack that can die in ways a plain valve never will; sometimes replacing the unit is more sensible than chasing the electronics.
When it truly is time, buy for fit and serviceability, not looks first — our kitchen faucet buying guide covers reading your sink's deck-hole count, cabinet clearance, spout reach, finish durability, and why a mainstream brand with cheap, forever-available cartridges is the repair-friendly choice that keeps you off this page next time.