The kitchen sink at home developed a leak. It turned out that the cold water supply hose had deteriorated and was leaking. Because I didn’t have time to look closer, I just closed the water supply valve to the sink and asked Michelle to buy a new hose. The next day, she bought a 1/2″ to 1/2″ hose which according to the salespeople at the hardware store is the normal sink hose. But when I looked under the sink, it didn’t look like it will fit the faucet end at all.
So I tried just plugging up the cold water source. I unscrewed the old hose from the source. However, I couldn’t unscrew it from the faucet-end so I wrenched it off with a Leatherman, leaving a small nub at the faucet end. I extracted the 1/2″ fitting from the old hose, plugged it with a 3M bumpon, and screwed it into the water source. The faucet worked but it had to stay at the hottest position otherwise, water will leak out of the faucet and down the open nub.
My next step was to remove the 1/2″ fitting from the new hose, peel back the mesh braid, to expose the rubber, plug it into the faucet end and clamp it with zip ties. I turned off the valve and screwed the hose into the source then turned the valve back on. It didn’t work too well. It leaked and leaked even with two zip ties. I even got a screw band hose clamp but it still leaked. So it was back to closed for the valve.
I finally decided to just get a new hose entirely. I went to the hardware store and the hose I’m looking for is called a hot/cold sink hose. I got one. Once I got back home, I struggled to remove the nub of the old fitting from the faucet side. After that I again struggled to tighten the new fitting into the faucet side. Finally, I screwed in the hose into the water source. Success! The faucet is back to how it was!
It was quite a lot of work but it was fun and, at the end, rewarding.