Home › The Thing We Will Not Say

The Thing We Will Not Say

There is an easy version of this site that would get more telephone calls, and it is the version that blurs a fixture’s manufacturing date into a claim about somebody’s drinking water. We are not going to write it.

Briefly

The date the lead-free definition changed is a published fact and appears here. What is in the water at any particular address is not, because that is a measurement at a tap by a certified laboratory rather than an inference from the age of a fixture.

FaucetMend is a referral service, not a contractor. We connect homeowners with independent contractors. Contractors are required to hold whatever credential their state or municipality demands. We carry out no work, we sell no fixtures, we do not set prices, and we never charge homeowners anything — the contractors in our network pay us when we route them a call. Nothing here is a statement about the water at any address; only a test of that water can tell you about it.

The difference between a date and a measurement

The 2014 line is a fact about manufacturing rules. It says what a fixture was permitted to contain when it was made. It is checkable, it is published by EPA, and we are happy to state it.

What is in the water coming out of a particular tap in a particular house on a particular morning is a measurement. It depends on the whole system, on how long the water has been standing, on the water itself, and on things nobody can see from the outside. No website can do it and this one will not pretend to.

So we publish no figure about anyone’s water

No typical level, no range, no share of homes, no estimate of what an older faucet contributes. Those numbers exist in various forms and some come from bodies we would be glad to cite. We leave them out because quoting a national figure next to a page about your kitchen tap invites a reader to apply it to themselves, and that is exactly what it cannot support.

What would actually tell you

A test of your own water by a certified laboratory. Your water utility can tell you how to get one and many will point you at an accredited lab; they also publish an annual water quality report for the system, which is about the system rather than your house.

We are not a laboratory, we do not test water, we do not interpret results and we do not sell anything that claims to treat it. If that is what you need, we are the wrong telephone number and we would rather say so.

Two other things we will not print

A price. We do not set prices and never see them; the contractors we route to set their own. What actually moves a faucet quote is a more useful page than a figure we would have had to invent.

A repair-or-replace verdict. It depends on the fixture, the parts, the sink and what the tap is used for. We set out the inputs and then leave the decision with the person who has to live with it.

Why say any of this out loud

Because silence looks the same whether a site checked and declined or never checked at all. A reader who can see which questions we refused can judge the ones we answered.

Know the maker? Say so on the call.Cartridges are specific to a manufacturer, and the name on the handle is frequently the difference between one visit and two. We route you to a contractor covering your area, chosen on the ZIP code you give, free of charge to you. Faucets are simply our subject; the number itself handles any plumbing request.

Call (888) 754-1330