Outside Faucet Repairs for Dummies

What "top cap," Maxwell????

If our research into the foolishness of self-described freelance "helpers" has proven anything so far, it's probably that DIY plumbers are working in about as dark a "black box" as DIY electricians. The main difference is that fouled-up plumbing (usually) can't kill you. We learned in about three days that you just don't take plumbing advice from people who got paid to write it, especially at eHow.com and similar sites. If you do, you're likely to end up trying to figure out just what these people meant when they reworded their original sources to avoid getting caught plagiarizing. It's much easier to write a synonym for a term you know than something unfamiliar... as was proven by eHow.com's Maxwell Payne, whom we caught pretending to know "How to Repair an Outside Faucet Drip"¹ for HomeSteady.com. Unfortunately for the readers, he didn't.

We figure you probably shouldn't take this advice from someone who doesn't know that the faucet is also known as a sillcock or a hydrant. We also suspect you shouldn't trust Maxwell when he describes the process of "finding the leak":

"Figure out if the drip is coming from the top section of the faucet or the actual faucet opening."

...which immediately had our researcher wondering, WTF is the "top section"? It's been our experience that sillcocks leak from the faucet or from around the valve stem, but Payne apparently doesn't know these words. That's OK, the rest of his advice is... suspect, too: "If you have a frost-free faucet, the top cap behind the handle can become loose. Use your hand to tighten it turning it clockwise while pushing gently down. If the leak continues it indicates it is coming from inside the faucet and out of the spout." Max used only one "reference" (which he shamelessly reworded) for his not-particularly-helpful article. That reference was for frost-free, anti-siphon hydrants, and is fairly good advice; but only if you have that brand of faucet. There are, after all, several kinds of outdoor faucets: not all of them are anti-siphon, not all of them are frost-free. If yours isn't both, Payne's "instructions" are pretty useless. They're even worse when you consider his poor grasp of the mechanics of a faucet: can you imagine a first-time DIY plumber faced with these suggestions:

• "Remove the screw in the center of the faucet handle using the Phillips screwdriver. Remove the handle. Use the wrench to remove the nut just behind where the handle was.
• Remove the small rubber washer (sometimes metal) that is behind where the nut was."

...trying to find the washer that is "behind where the nut... behind where the handle was"? When he or she can't even get the handle off? Don't you just love DIY – do-it-yourself – advice from people who've never DIT – done-it-themselves? We're not certain; but we think maybe Max was referring to the washer on the end of the valve stem.

Probably. Of course, he never mentions the bonnet packing, which is more likely the source of a leak on a conventional sillcock. And we're almost certain we've never seen a metal faucet washer: where'd he get that bullshit? Come to think of it, we know where: he got it from the Dumbass of the Day bullpuckey dispenser eHow issued to so many of its contributors!

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_7649767_repair-outside-faucet-drip.html

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