Starting about a week ago, our kitchen faucet has exhibited some odd behavior. When you lift the handle for it, nothing comes out for a second. You can hear air or water flowing, but nothing comes out. Then, a second later, the water comes out.
If you turn the water off and then on again soon thereafter, it works normally. But if the water is off for awhile, you get the delay again. This happens for hot and cold water. There are no leaks or drips under the sink that I can see.
Our kitchen faucet is the single-handle style, where you move the handle to choose water temperature, and it does have a sprayer attachment, in case that is relevant.
Best Answer
Over the weekend I determined what the cause was. Thanks to everyone for the helpful suggestions; the actual problem was slightly different.
The problem was that the sprayer hose was loose on the sprayer end. Since the hose is pressurized when the faucet is on, this meant that the sprayer leaked a little from the bottom while the water was on, and a little bit after turning the faucet off. This meant that the next time you turned the faucet on, the hose was partially empty of water, so it took a second to pressurize the hose before water would come out of the faucet.
Tightening the sprayer hose connection seems to have fixed the problem.