LESLIE: Sage in New York is on the line with an outdoor-watering question. Tell us what’s going on.
SAGE: How are you doing? I have an outdoor faucet, which I use to connect my hose in the front. And I believe it’s called a “frost-free sillcock.”
TOM: Right. Mm-hmm.
SAGE: And the problem I have is that when I open the faucet, I can open it full but the water takes, sometimes, up to a minute to come out, if it comes out at all.
TOM: Now, inside your house, there’s going to be another valve that is designed to shut off that line for the winter. Did you check to make sure that valve was fully open?
SAGE: It is fully open, yes.
TOM: So the valve is fully open on the inside of the house, the valve – the hose bib – on the outside of the house – that you open it up and it takes a minute to come out. And when it comes out, is it kind of fast or slow or what?
SAGE: It comes out slow and I also wondered if the fact that the pressure was lower on this faucet, as compared to the faucet at the back of the house, was part of the problem?
TOM: And how old is the house?
SAGE: Oh, the house is only about three years old.
TOM: Three years old? Alright. So the plumbing should be fine.
What you’re describing is simply a valve that’s not fully open. And so, if the valve inside is open and the valve outside is open, then somewhere we’ve got a bad valve. Because that shouldn’t be happening; it should be very simple. The valve opens, the water flies out. Three-year-old house, there’s no reason for any corrosion to be inside the pipe or anything of that nature. And so you’ve got a bad valve somewhere; that’s what has to be looked into.
SAGE: OK. Alright. Thank you.
TOM: Sage, thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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