Yesterday morning, after I had dumped all the remaining ice out of a cooler, and then ran the garbage disposal in our kitchen sink the night before, the air gap faucet on our reverse osmosis water tank was leaking. Water came out of the small hole on the bottom of the faucet, partially dripping along a hose into the cabinet under the sink. Not good!

We shut the cold water in our kitchen off, went to work, and planned to fix this later. But how? The initial assessment in the morning was clear: something is clogged somewhere. Great! Two questions remain: 1. where exactly is it clogged? and 2. how do we unclog it?

I spent my lunch hour researching the problem online. The biggest problem is knowing what to ask Google so that you get relevant results. I find that wording your problem like a question you would ask a person works pretty good nowadays. When I asked Google “how do I fix a leaking faucet on my reverse osmosis system?” I found lots of great explanations about how reverse osmosis systems work, what could go wrong, and how to fix things. My leaky faucet, though, resisted discovery for quite some time – simply because I didn’t know what question to ask.

I first had to learn that there are two different types of faucets commonly used in RO systems. Ours has what’s called an “air gap faucet” – hence the little hole in the bottom. After I learned this new detail, I refined my search to “air gap faucet on reverse osmosis tank leaks”. All of a sudden my results on Google were extremely relevant! Lots of people seemed to have had this exact same problem in their kitchen. Plenty of solutions were offered – basically all telling me to “clean out the clogged drain hose that comes out of the faucet”. OK – but how?

This is the point where some internet users evolve from learners to teachers – with varied success. I found some pretty elaborate diagrams and wordy text, telling me to take the whole faucet out and apart, and clean everything with pipe cleaners. What a project! Only one very short entry on a forum suggested to “simply blow it out”. This was the key to my success, but it required some thinking. How am I supposed to “blow it out”? Stick my head in the sink, and attempt to blow into the hole on the bottom of the faucet? That can’t be it!

And there it was again – one of my “genius moments” – I used a compressed air spray can to blow air into the little hole to clear out the drain hose. Because I try to be a good netizen, I also made an instructional video for others who may have the same problem. You will just have to know how to find it. or you can click here: how to fix a leaking air gap faucet