What do you do when a faucet starts leaking?  We had a problem a while back at our house, when we realized the floor of the cabinet under the kitchen sink was damp.

We could not see any drip and could not tell where it was coming from.  There was some funny stuff going on, and we were not liking hte moist dank smell that we realized was already developing.

We called our home warranty people, and they sent round a plumber.  The Plumber could not find the problem initially, but gave me some clues and instructions on how to check and determine the source, before we started knocking holes in the wall and messing stuff up!

After watching and investigating we finally were able to find that the small gate valve for the hot water side was indeed leaking, but it seemed to be intermittent.  I disconnected the dish washer, and found there was water under the dishwasher.

This was not good, since the dishwasher had not worked since we moved in!  I have not yet put in the new one, and this was a good time to get that one out and soak up the water I found under it!

I did some trouble shooting and finally had to come back to that single faucet.  I called the plumber back and he came to proceed based on the clues we had.

It turns out it was that gate valve, to which was also connected the dishwasher pipe.  When he removed the valve we saw that it was eaten up inside with corrosion.

It looked like it should have been spewing!  But it was solid outside.  So we redid the connection, added a second valve to control the dishwasher connection and got everything back in order!

I had a similar but much easier problem with leaking outside faucets when we moved into our current house.  With some help from Internet research and Lowe’s, where my wife went to ge the fixin’s, we got this one done.

Here are some practical steps to fixing a leaky faucet:
[1] 8 steps to fixing a leaky faucet