Polly Plumbing | 1762 Keller Pkwy, Keller, TX | (817) 286-3446. Written by Haven Brady, Co-Founder. Locally owned, not a franchise. Every diagnosis on our trucks gets reviewed by a licensed master plumber. Texas License RMP-42199. Serving Keller, Southlake, North Richland Hills, Grapevine, Flower Mound, Fort Worth, Arlington, Trophy Club, Roanoke, and all of Tarrant County.
There is a part in your faucet roughly the size of a nickel. It can shut the whole thing off.
That is the honest headline of this article, and it is why we are going to spend most of it teaching you to fix your own problem. One dead faucet in an otherwise normal house is usually small. Often it is free. The trouble is that the causes look identical from the outside. So people either live with a useless sink for months, or call somebody before trying the two-minute check that would have solved it.
So here is the order a plumber actually works through, written so you can work through it yourself. Most of you will stop at step two. We will also cover the versions that are not small, because occasionally one dead faucet is the first symptom of something bigger, and knowing that line matters.
Sixty Seconds of Triage First
Before touching anything, answer two questions. They split this problem four ways and save you from fixing the wrong thing.
Question one: is it really just this fixture? Walk the house. Run the kitchen, both bathrooms, the tub. If every fixture is weak, you do not have a faucet problem. You have a house problem, and that is our low water pressure guide for Keller TX instead. This article only applies when the rest of the house is genuinely fine.
Question two: is it the hot side, the cold side, or both? Run each separately at the dead fixture and pay attention.
Both sides dead points to something after the two supplies meet: the aerator, the cartridge, or the faucet itself. One side dead points upstream of that, to the shutoff valve or supply line on that side, or to a cartridge failing unevenly. Only the hot side dead across several fixtures is a water heater conversation, not a faucet one.
Write down those two answers. Everything below reads differently depending on them.
Start Where It Usually Ends: The Aerator
The aerator is the little screened cap at the tip of your faucet. It mixes air into the stream so the water feels smooth instead of firing like a hose. It is also a strainer, and in Keller it works hard.
Our water is among the hardest in Texas, per the City of Keller’s water quality reports. Hard water means dissolved minerals, and minerals build up on every screen they pass through. Add the occasional grain of sediment from the pipes and you get a screen that closes slowly over months. Flow fades, then fades more, then one day there is nothing. Because it happened gradually, most people never connect it to a part they have never looked at.
Here is the test, and it takes two minutes. Unscrew the aerator by hand, counterclockwise as you face the faucet. If it will not budge, wrap the jaws of your pliers in a rag or a few turns of tape before gripping, which keeps the finish from getting chewed up. With the aerator off, run the faucet.
Strong flow with the aerator removed means you found it. Done. Soak the aerator in white vinegar for half an hour, brush the screen, rinse it, and thread it back on. If it is corroded or falling apart, a replacement is a couple of dollars at any hardware store, and matching the old one is mostly about size and thread direction.
One gotcha worth knowing. Many newer faucets use a hidden aerator, recessed up inside the spout with no edges to grip. Those need a small plastic key, and that key came taped inside the box the faucet arrived in. Nearly everyone throws it away. Replacements are inexpensive online if you know your faucet brand, and it is worth having, because a hidden aerator clogs exactly like a visible one.
The Valve Nobody Fully Reopened
Still nothing with the aerator off? Look under the sink.
There are usually two angle stops down there, small valves feeding hot and cold up to the faucet. They get closed by accident more than anyone admits. A box shoved under the cabinet nudges one. Someone shut them for a repair and only turned them most of the way back on. A cleaning session bumped a handle. This is a genuinely common cause and the check costs nothing.
Look at the valve position, then cycle it: close it fully, then open it fully, which also breaks loose light mineral crust inside. Do this gently. Old angle stops that have not moved in fifteen years occasionally start weeping the moment they are finally turned, which is the same warning we give in our rebuild or replace a toilet guide. If a valve is visibly corroded or stiff, stop and let us swap it. That is a small part, and forcing it is how a small problem becomes a wet cabinet.
If cycling the valve restored flow, you are finished, and you now know something useful about that valve for next time.
The Bucket Test That Splits the Problem in Half
This is the step most homeowners skip and every plumber does, because it settles where the blockage lives.
Close the angle stop. Disconnect the supply line where it meets the faucet, and point that line into a bucket. Now crack the valve open slowly.
Good flow into the bucket means everything upstream is fine, and your problem is in the faucet itself: the cartridge, or the passages inside the body. No flow, or a sad trickle, means the problem is upstream in the valve or the supply line, and the faucet is innocent.
That single test saves people from buying a cartridge they did not need. Two cautions: keep a towel down, because the line will spit, and open the valve slowly rather than all at once.
When It Is the Cartridge
If the bucket test says the water is arriving fine, the cartridge is next.
The cartridge is the valve inside your faucet that controls flow and temperature. It has small passages, and in hard water those passages scale up the same way the aerator does. Cartridges also just wear out. Typical signs: a handle that feels stiff, gritty, or spins with no effect, hot and cold behaving unevenly, weak flow on one side only, or flow that fades over months.
This one is a fair do-it-yourself job for a confident homeowner and a fair call for everybody else. It means shutting off both angle stops, pulling the handle and trim, extracting the cartridge, and matching a replacement to your exact faucet model. That last part is where people get stuck: cartridges are brand and model specific, so photograph the old one and take it with you rather than guessing at the store. Some pull straight out, others need a puller tool.
Worth flagging: if you have replaced cartridges in this house more than once in a couple of years, the cartridges are not the problem. Something upstream is chewing through them, and that is usually pressure. Our high water pressure guide covers the five minute gauge test that confirms it. Fixing that stops you buying cartridges forever.
For the fixture-level work, our faucet repair page for Keller TX covers what we handle.
“It Started Right After…”
Here is a diagnostic shortcut worth more than it sounds.
If a faucet went weak or dead suddenly, and you can finish the sentence “it started right after,” you have probably already solved it. After a water main break or city work on the street. After a water heater replacement or flush. After any plumbing repair in the house. After the water was shut off and turned back on for any reason.
Any event that shuts water off and turns it back on stirs up sediment and scale sitting in the lines. City work, a main break, a water heater replacement or flush, or a repair inside the house all qualify. When flow resumes, that debris travels and lodges in the first small opening it finds. Which is your aerators and your cartridges. That is why one faucet can die two days after work that had nothing to do with it.
The fix is the same as above, aerator first, and the useful part is knowing to check every fixture in the house rather than just the one that complained. Debris rarely picks a single target. And if a shutoff was involved, check that it went fully back open, because that is the other half of this pattern.
Polly Plumbing is a locally owned shop on Keller Parkway. We repair faucets, valves, and supply lines across Keller and Tarrant County, and we will tell you when it is a part you can handle yourself.
Showers Are a Different Animal
If the dead fixture is a shower, skip most of the above, because showers have no aerator to clean.
A showerhead can scale up the same way, and that is worth ruling out first: unscrew it and run the arm. If flow is strong from the bare arm, the head is your problem, and a vinegar soak usually revives it. Overnight in a bag of vinegar tied around the head works when you cannot remove it.
Beyond that, showers run on a single mixing valve cartridge behind the wall. Those fail the same way sink cartridges do, just with more consequence, since access is harder and the part is bigger. Weak flow, temperature that wanders, or a handle that feels wrong all point there. Our shower repair guide for Keller TX covers that work. This is also the one where we would rather you call before disassembling, because a shower valve that comes apart wrong turns a repair into an access panel and a tile conversation.
When One Dead Faucet Is Not Small
Almost every one of these ends in a cheap part. Occasionally it does not, and here is how to spot the version that deserves a real look.
If several fixtures are fading at once, especially in an older home, you may be looking at supply piping that is closing up rather than fixtures that are clogging. That is a genuine possibility in Keller and North Richland Hills homes old enough to have galvanized steel lines, which corrode inward over decades until flow chokes. Our main water line repair vs replacement guide covers what that looks like and how the decision gets made.
Sudden loss at one fixture in freezing weather is a different emergency entirely, and it is worth calling rather than experimenting.
And sometimes a single-fixture complaint simply turns out to be bigger once we open it up. We ran a call this July that started exactly this way, one fixture with nothing coming out, and it did not end as a two dollar part. That is not the common outcome, and we are not going to pretend it is. But it is why the honest version of this article says: try the list, and if the list runs out, stop guessing.
What Is Actually Fine
A quick reality check before you go buy parts.
A faucet that is slightly slower than the one across the hall is often just a different aerator rating, not a problem. A brand new faucet with weak flow is frequently debris knocked loose during installation, and the aerator check fixes it. And a single fixture that has always been the weak one, for years, is probably plumbed with a longer or smaller branch line, which is a design quirk rather than a fault.
The thing worth chasing is change. A fixture that used to be fine and is not anymore has a reason, and the reason is usually on the list above.
What It Costs, the Short Honest Version
Most of this article costs nothing. An aerator cleaning is free, a replacement aerator is pocket change, and reopening a valve someone bumped is free with a mild sense of embarrassment. Cartridges are an inexpensive part with a modest labor charge when we do them, and they sit at the small end of our board. Angle stop replacement is likewise small. The costs only climb if the answer turns out to be supply piping rather than a fixture, which is the uncommon case and gets quoted honestly after we have actually looked. As always, the written quote is the invoice, the $89 dispatch fee is waived for PollyCare members, and there is no emergency surcharge.
What We Hope You Never Call Us For
We are a plumbing company telling you how to avoid calling a plumbing company, and that is intentional.
Cleaning an aerator, reopening an angle stop, soaking a showerhead, and swapping a cartridge on a forgiving faucet are all genuinely yours. If this article saves you a service call, that is a good outcome, and it is a better introduction to us than an invoice would have been. We would rather be the shop you remember for the free answer than the one that charged you to unscrew a nickel-sized part.
What we do want the call for is the moment the list runs out. When the bucket test says the water is not arriving. When a valve is corroded enough that turning it feels like a gamble. When several fixtures fade together in an older house. When it is a shower valve behind finished tile. Those are the ones where guessing gets expensive, and they are the ones we are actually for.
We Are Close By
Polly Plumbing repairs faucets, valves, showers, and supply lines from our shop on Keller Parkway, serving Keller, Southlake, North Richland Hills, Flower Mound, Fort Worth, Arlington, Trophy Club, Roanoke, and all of Tarrant County.
Worked the list and still dry? That is the call we want. Dial (817) 286-3446. Live agents answer 24/7, no emergency surcharge, and the written quote is the invoice.
Frequently Asked Questions About No Water at One Faucet
Why does one faucet have no water when the rest of the house is fine?
Because the problem is downstream of everything shared, so it lives at that fixture. The usual causes, in the order to check them: a clogged aerator at the faucet tip, a shutoff valve under the sink that got bumped or never fully reopened, a supply line issue, or a worn or scaled cartridge. In Keller’s hard water, mineral buildup at the aerator is the single most common answer and often the cheapest. Start there before buying any parts. Call Polly Plumbing at (817) 286-3446 if the list runs out.
How do I clean a faucet aerator?
Unscrew it from the faucet tip by hand, counterclockwise. If it is stuck, wrap your pliers’ jaws in tape or a rag first so the finish does not get chewed up. Run the faucet with the aerator off: strong flow confirms the aerator was the problem. Soak it in white vinegar for about thirty minutes, brush the screen, rinse, and reinstall. If it is corroded, replacements cost a couple of dollars. Newer faucets often have a hidden aerator needing the small plastic key that came in the box. Call Polly Plumbing at (817) 286-3446.
Why does only the hot water not work at one faucet?
A single-side failure points upstream of where hot and cold mix. Check the hot angle stop under the sink first, since valves get bumped closed or left partly shut after a repair. Next suspect the hot supply line or a cartridge failing unevenly, which is common as internal passages scale up in hard water. If the hot side is weak at several fixtures rather than one, that is a water heater conversation instead of a faucet one. Call Polly Plumbing at (817) 286-3446 and we will sort which.
My faucet stopped working right after plumbing work. Why?
Almost certainly debris. Any event that shuts water off and turns it back on stirs up sediment and scale sitting in the lines. City work, a main break, a water heater replacement or flush, or a repair inside the house all qualify. When flow resumes, that debris travels and lodges in the first small opening it finds, which is your aerators and cartridges. Clean the aerator first, check every fixture rather than just the one that complained, and confirm any shutoff went fully back open. Call Polly Plumbing at (817) 286-3446.
How do I know if it is the faucet or the pipes?
Use the bucket test. Close the angle stop under the sink, disconnect the supply line from the faucet, point it into a bucket, and open the valve slowly. Strong flow into the bucket means everything upstream is fine and the problem is inside the faucet, usually the cartridge. Little or no flow means the trouble is in the valve or supply line and the faucet is innocent. That one test prevents buying a cartridge you did not need. Keep a towel handy. Call Polly Plumbing at (817) 286-3446.
Should I replace the faucet cartridge myself?
It is reasonable for a confident homeowner. Shut off both angle stops, remove the handle and trim, pull the cartridge, and match a replacement to your exact faucet brand and model, since cartridges are model specific. Photograph the old one and bring it with you rather than guessing. Some need a puller tool. Call a plumber if the valve is corroded, the cartridge will not release, or it is a shower valve behind finished tile, where a wrong move turns a repair into a tile job. Call Polly Plumbing at (817) 286-3446.
Why do my faucet cartridges keep failing?
If you are replacing cartridges in the same house every year or two, the cartridges are not the real problem. Something is wearing them out early, and excess water pressure is the usual cause, since it holds every seal and valve seat under more force than it was designed for. Keller’s hard water accelerates it further by scaling the internal passages. Test your pressure with an inexpensive hose bib gauge; anything over 80 psi is above code and worth correcting at the pressure reducing valve. Call Polly Plumbing at (817) 286-3446.