ricketyclick

I hate flow-restricted faucets. I can adjust the faucet myself, thanks, and sometimes I want that pot or bucket to fill up as quickly as possible, please.

But you can’t buy unrestricted aerators anymore. Federal law mandates that you can’t draw more than 2.2 gallons/minute from your tap.

My old kitchen sink aerator got clogged awhile back, and I couldn’t clean it out, so I had to buy a new one, and just tolerate the restricted flow. Then it got clogged, and I took it apart to clean it:

Left to right: Body, housing, screen, bushing, mixer, restrictor, gasket (internal thread), gasket (external thread). [Part names from this diagram.]

Here’s a close up of the key parts:

That flat plate on the right, with the hole in the middle? That’s the flow restricter. All the water must flow through that hole.

Turns out, the aerator works just fine without it. I had thought it was glued in place, but it only snaps in; a small hemostat or needle nose pliers will yank it out presto-change-o.

Take that, bureaucratic scum!

[That part in the middle is the mixer, the thing that does the actual aeration. It goes in pin-down, as shown in the first picture.]

Tags: aerator, flow restrictor, water saving

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 3:21 pm and is filed under Fighting Back, Government Idiocy, Political Correctness, Technology, Throwing Out the Trash. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.