What Are the Causes of Low Water Pressure in Kitchen Sinks in Cold Weather?

Clogged Aerator

• A kitchen sink faucet might experience a drop in water pressure, either sudden or over a period of time, as sediment builds up in the faucet’s aerator. The aerator is a screen that sits on the faucet spout’s opening. During cold weather, the city’s water supply pipes might freeze and crack, allowing sand and other debris to enter the water supply. These debris flow freely through your house’s water supply pipes and eventually become caught in the aerator, slowing down the flow of water and dropping the water pressure.

Cleaning Aerators

• Cleaning an aerator only takes a few moments and few tools or supplies. You need to first unscrew the aerator’s housing from the spout’s opening, which you might not be able to do with your fingers. Before you use pliers to turn the aerator’s housing, you need to protect the aerator body’s finish by wrapping duct tape around the pliers’ jaws and covering the teeth. Once you remove the aerator, you may flush it by turning the aerator over and shooting water through it the opposite way as usual.

Frozen Pipes

• Partially frozen pipes will not cut off the flow of water to the kitchen sink’s faucet, but the wall of ice that forms on the inside of a water supply pipe constricts how much water can flow through the pipe so the water pressure drops. Pipes that are more prone to freezing run through areas of the house that are not insulated such as an unfinished basement or the garage. The pipe might just run behind the wall and against the house’s exterior, where the pipe is exposed to enough cold to freeze some of the water inside.

Thawing Pipes

• When a pipe freezes, you must heat up the pipe and the water inside to restore the water pressure to your kitchen faucet. Applying an open flame to a frozen pipe can cause the metal to expand too quickly, rupturing the pipe and leading to flooding. You must leave the kitchen faucet open as you work to thaw the pipe, because the flow of water will help transport the melted ice away so more ice in the pipe melts. You may warm up the area where the froze pipe sits using a space heater. Wrapping towels that you submerged in hot water around the pipe or heating it up with a hair dryer also helps thaw a pipe safely.