Delta Single Handle Faucet Cartridge Replacement
3 Video Views·Jul 10, 2020
DELTA PROVIDES FREE REPLACEMENTS: https://www.deltafaucet.com/service-parts/contact-us
Many modern household faucets utilize cartridges to make repair easy and nearly foolproof. This modular repair approach, along with better materials (such as ceramics) than in times past, results in minimum downtime when a repair is needed, as well as longer times between repairs.
This episode features the repair of a Delta 978-SSSD-DST Leland® Series single-handle kitchen faucet. The same approach is used by many manufacturers for many models. So, once you understand the basics, you can do this type of repair for whatever brand you are working with.
There’s a lot going on in a very small space in these types of pull lever type fixtures. Cold and hot water inlets, the mixer, handle stem, and the temperature limiter is all in a VERY small space. Everything has to be precise, and that limits the number of items (such as washers) that can be replaced individually by the homeowner.
Enter the cartridge. Instead of little single parts, a module is used to change out all of the key parts of the faucet at the same time. Only simple tools are needed and very little time to resolve the problem. To do the job on our Delta faucet, we only needed a ⅛” hex key/wrench, an adjustable wrench, a mini straight blade screwdriver, and some silicone caulk.
Follow along, and in just a few minutes you’ll know exactly what you need to know to do the job right the first time!
So, instead of throwing away your single-handle faucet, or hiring someone to fix a simple leak, you can… JUST DO IT YOURSELF!
Hey, Dirk Farmer Jay here from DirkFarmerJay.com.
Do you have one of these types of faucets, a single lever faucet?
And it's driving you crazy. It's dripping.
Well, sooner or later, you're going to have to repair one of these.
And it's a lot easier than you think.
Stay tuned and I'll show you how.
Dirk Farmer Jay here from DirkFarmerJay.com.
We really like this type of faucet set.
This particular one is from Delta.
All the other manufacturers have this style as well.
It's called a single lever faucet.
And sometimes they're on the side like this on across the deck.
Other times there's a base plate that's right here and there's one lever behind it.
This one has a higher gooseneck with an extendable flex hose,
which we really, really like.
But there's a lot going on in one little place
in this faucet setup that you need to take care of and be aware of.
Fortunately, it's a modular system.
Now, the faucet that I'm actually repairing is a Delta 978 SSD DST.
And you can see on the instruction manual, this faucet's about 10 years old now.
And it's just now starting to develop some issues where you have to be
very precise at putting it back in the right position
and jiggle it a little bit and stop the drip.
It's really annoying.
So but 10 years of service, that's pretty doggone good.
And so this particular manual that came with this is for all of these models,
which we put in the search terms below.
So if you're looking to repair this, likely you've landed here
for one of these faucets right here.
But if you have another manufacturer, all the systems are not identical,
but they take the same approach where you have a replaceable cartridge.
Now, it may not be real obvious to you, as you can see,
this drip is just keep going and going
where the cartridge is.
But it's right here, right down in this here.
This is the soap dispenser.
This happens to be a reverse osmosis water dispenser.
But this is where all the magic happens.
So what you're going to be replacing, if you have either water
coming out from underneath the trim, water that continues here,
you can't get it to shut off correctly.
You're going to be replacing this cartridge.
Now, there's a lot going on in this little device,
and there's nothing in this device that is serviceable by anybody.
It's all integrated.
So you can't take little parts out of it, replace
washers, and the materials now are a lot better than they used to be.
There's ceramics in this, some really high strength plastics,
a lot of good wear surfaces.
But there's a lot happening in this little device.
Let me show you what I mean.
If you look at the bottom of this, it kind of looks like a
almost like a monkey in a gas mask.
But anyway, you can kind of see here
that one of these is the hot water inlet.
The other side is the cold water inlet.
This whole area up here then mixes that in the proportion you call for.
And then the water comes out, mixed at the temperature
you want back out this, up the pipeline, back in and out the spout.
So you've got inlets and an outlet all happening right there.
Plus, you have an integrated seal that's across the bottom there
that is already there, ready to go.
And if you look on the top, here's your control handle.
But inside there, you'll see this little orange slider.
That is your temperature limiter that tells you how much hot water
is allowed in from the hot water side.
To greatly reduce the likelihood or the possibility of scalding
from a water heater that's set really hot.
And you end up with just putting real almost boiling water out of this.
So you can, first of all, you probably shouldn't have your water
heater set that hot.
But if you've got uncomfortable hot water coming out of this,
then you can adjust that right there using that.
And there's instructions on it.
Well, let's get to work and let's take this apart.
So here is our replacement cartridge.
We'll put that in here.
And as you can see, I went and turned off the water.
Make sure you do that and you have a mess.
As you can see, we have no water pressure here now at all.
So we're done.
Now, the next thing we're going to need to do,
here's just something a little thing you want to be careful of.
We're going to be pulling a little hot and cold indicator,
a little logo out from under this that covers the Allen screw
that attaches the handle to the stem here.
So when we pull that out, that thing falls off and goes down the drain.
It's not going to be a good day.
So I'm going to go ahead and just
take a dish rag, put that down there.
Or if I had a stopper handy, I'd do that.
We're going to put a little screwdriver under that, pull that out.
And as you can see, it's a little cover.
Red for hot, blue for cold, hot on the left, blue on the right.
So let's go ahead and move that off the side.
Now you're going to need an eighth inch
hex key, also known as an Allen wrench.
And I like to use these T kinds because it allows me to reach up there far enough.
And you're going to put that in and get that into that handle set
and then hold on to the top and undo it.
You can see that it's got some good grip, good bite.
So let's see if I got enough.
There it is. Off it came.
So there's the handle.
And now you're going to see over here
a retainer that's holding this trim piece.
Now, to be honest with you, I already took this off once
just to make sure that I had everything ready to go.
And the caulk that was down at the bottom holding this in place has been removed.
You, after you're done, you're going to put caulk around this
and just keep water out from under it.
But now see that it's caught, it won't come up.
So what you have to do is push these little deals in until it lets go.
Then the whole thing will lift off.
Sometimes that black ring right there will stay behind
and then you need to lift it off other times it comes off.
But now you have the retainer that holds the trim package.
Now we are down to this piece and this is what you see here.
I'm just going to match the limiter settings.
As you can see, it's just slightly away from the left.
And that's the way we're going to set it here.
That's the off position.
And of course, it's going to go in the same way.
And there are little locator pins at the bottom
that make sure that you don't put this in backwards or sideways.
It can only go in correctly.
And that is the correct way.
Now, this is the bonnet nut.
And like we said, you're going to find this in all of these systems like this.
So take yourself a large crescent wrench.
It's brass.
So be careful.
Or for you purists, instead of a crescent wrench, that's an adjustable wrench.
And we're going to adjust that till it is actually very nicely snug
because I don't want to round that off.
And then we're going to take this and start turning.
And as you can see, it starts turning.
It's pretty finger tight.
Off it comes.
So this comes up.
Off comes the whole item.
There's the base that's there.
Leave that alone.
You're simply going to drop this out.
And as you can see, there's your two locator sockets right there
that match up these two locator pins that goes right back like that.
And all the integrated
gasket is all in place.
It can only fit.
Here's the inlet inlet.
Hot, cold, outbound to the spout.
So we're going to put it in just like this.
This comes back over the top.
I'm going to screw that down.
Make sure that you got that nice.
Some people like to sanitize this.
We're just going to finger tighten it down for right now.
Make sure that everything feels good and it does.
Then we'll go ahead and take our adjustable wrench and again,
make sure it's nice and tight on the side and then just cinch it down.
The idea is not to see how strong you can be.
Just bring it down till it's nice.
And there's a little bit of gauging on this.
As you can see, that started to turn, meaning that I actually overstart
to tighten it, so I brought it back.
We should be fine here.
And I'm going to do something really quickly.
I'm going to run down, turn back on the water because
even this will operate right now just by doing this.
Let's make sure we don't have any leaks develop here.
Everything runs right before I put the trim back on.
OK, let's I'll go turn the water on.
OK, so we've turned back on the water downstairs, both the hot and cold side
to make sure we're testing everything.
I'm going to go ahead and put that back up.
Look at there.
We have nice water there.
Shuts off real cleanly.
I'll go left to hot.
It's going to take a moment here, but definitely starting to warm up.
And I'm going to go to the right just to pure cold.
Oh, you can feel that's cold.
We have nice well water.
And so you can see what's going on under the trim pack and to shut it off.
I'm just going to pull it forward and straight down.
Look at that. No drips whatsoever.
All right.
We're ready to put the trim back on.
We're going to go the retainer.
OK, and we have that in place and I split it.
So it's on both sides of this right here.
I would run a bead of caulk all around in this first.
And I won't waste your time doing that, but use a good silicone grade caulk.
And I've got some that's a real aluminized.
So it looks really nice of the stainless.
We're going to put that over line up those little indents with that.
Click it in and there you go.
It's very nice.
Now we're simply going to go ahead and place
our and that fits over very nicely.
It finds it. It's real solid.
And then we're going to go ahead and use our wrench underneath.
Locate our allen wrench and allen key.
And then only a couple turns.
Tighten that down nice.
Look at there. Very nice.
Very clean. Boom.
Well, how's that for a fast and simple repair?
These repair kits are about thirty five dollars.
But you think about it.
Ten years of life. Thirty five bucks.
Three dollars and fifty cents.
About a penny a day for a great system that we really like.
And boy, there's many times when you've got your hand full or whatever
hands full that you can bump the sink and control it.
Very simple. Great system.
And you can use this approach on all the manufacturers.
Hey, if you have some insights you'd like to offer to your fellow
viewer family members, feel free to do so in the
the comments below.
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This is DerfarmerJ from DerfarmerJ.com