Tracking a leak down

This week will have been almost entirely consumed looking for the origin of a leak that has messed up everything contained inside the closet, under our kitchen sink. Nothing glorious or exciting about a quest that almost drove me insane. 

If you see what’s going under our kitchen sink, you would agree; how is it even possible to locate a leak in this confused and cluttered space where a full reverse-osmosis (RO) filtration system has to cohabit with a trash compactor, a pull out faucet and a few other technical accessories. You might be hard pressed to know where to begin.

A bit like opening up a patient’s belly yourself and glancing at the task at hand if you’re not quite a bona fide surgeon. At first, I assumed it was a leak from our RO. I called Paul, our plumber whom we trust and he kindly guided me via texts on how to proceed as I was placed on his waiting list. 

I did what he suggested and then some more, to the point that I learned quickly about servicing and trouble-shooting our RO system. Yet, days went by and the leak was stubbornly still there. It’s only after the 5th day that I had the brilliant idea to film with my phone what was going on inside that closet. 

As we were manually doing the dishes that night, the camera was rolling and when all was said and done, we previewed the video and discovered that the elusive leak was coming from the flexible tube of the pull-out main faucet that was frayed and, when pulled, was spraying water all around the closet and into the various components of our RO. 

When the plumber finally came this afternoon to change the defective hose, he was welcome like a savior. Well, he was our savior!