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My garden hose faucet leaks out of the valve knob center whenever it is on. leaks out of the valve knob center. Can this be fixed? How?

Patrick Szalapski
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    Can you annotate to show where the leak is coming from? – JStorage Apr 18 '16 at 22:04
  • Cute! Love that old faucet. Have you tried turning the water off at the street, disassembling this faucet and using plumber's tape on the threads? Otherwise, get a new faucet! Depending where you live you might find a stand alone faucet called frost proof would be a good idea to install. Not tough to do at all. Otherwise, looks like you could screw that old head off, scrub the rust off and use plumber's tape. Great great stuff! – stormy Apr 18 '16 at 22:11
  • The water is leaking out around the screw that fastens the knob on. – Patrick Szalapski Apr 18 '16 at 23:09
  • Is the water coming from over the *top* of the black plastic screw on part, or coming from below the black screw on part which connects to the water time? You can try a new washer but some leaks are not fixable. *DO NOT* over tighten or the black plastic might crack. On hoses I simply cut off the female end and replace it with a new brass female hose end. – Bulrush Apr 20 '16 at 14:44
  • Ignore the plastic. The leak is from the top knob center. – Patrick Szalapski Apr 20 '16 at 17:05

3 Answers3

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You need to replace the stem packing. The stem that the knob is affixed to the end of is sealed with a packing nut which has either a packing washer or a quantity of packing material under it.

You can buy "string packing" at the hardware store. Loosen the packing nut and jam a few loops of it up under the nut, then tighten it back down.

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Jimmy Fix-it
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I recently had a similar problem (different style tap). I believe what you probably need to do is -

  1. turn off the water to the tap (ie at the mains)
  2. Undo the tap by using a spanner turning anticlockwise on the hexagonal part beneath the tap handle. Unfortunately this is likely to be quite tight as its been painted over. [ It might be easier to unscrew the tap off the wall, then put it in a vice to get it off ]
  3. Remove and replace the washer beneath the tap - This is the key part.
  4. Apply plumbing tape (about 10-20 turns - 30cm/a foot or so of tape) to the male part of the hex part of the tap
  5. Screw tap back in as tight as you can.
  6. Cross fingers, turn mains on, turn tap on to see if problem is solved.

I do note that when I attempted part 3, I noticed that the brass underneath the washer was actually stuffed, so I dug up another tap and fitted that instead of replacing the washer - I expect taps are cheaper in the US, but I paid about US$20 for a replacement tap.

davidgo
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  • You can also use what's known as a "tap reseater" or "tap seat grinder" (manual ones fairly cheap at the local hardware store) to flatten out the bit below the washer. Also, the flat metal washers tend to last a fair bit longer than the soft rounded rubber ones. I've not used the flat plastic variety. – Bob Apr 19 '16 at 05:48
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Cute! Love that old faucet. Have you tried turning the water off at the street, disassembling this faucet and using plumber's tape on the threads? Otherwise, get a new faucet! Depending where you live you might find a stand alone faucet called frost proof would be a good idea to install. Not tough to do at all. Otherwise, looks like you could screw that old head off, scrub the rust off and use plumber's tape. Great great stuff!

stormy
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