I flushed my water heater today, and carefully turned a faucet back on that had the aerator removed to hopefully flush sediment out through that one. After that, I did the rest of the house faucets. They all seemed to work except the kitchen.
Kitchen faucet is the single-handle pull-down sprayer type. When I started, the hot water had very little pressure and the longer it ran, the less it trickled; cold water ran fine. I figured it was sediment plugging the mixer cartridge so I pulled that first and flushed it with water. Put it back, and still the same. So I disconnected the hot water hose, and ran it by itself into a bucket. Not a bad stream, but it wasn't straight (I have hard water) so I look at both ends of the hose and both look a little plugged with sediment. Replaced the hose. Still the same.
So I got a little more aggressive with trying to backflush the hoses with an air compressor at the mixing valve and the end of the sprayer line, but it seems like they have some check valves in the lines somewhere because the air would come right back out when I moved the air line away from the opening.
Now when I reassembled the whole faucet, the hot water runs about half-volume (improvement) and the cold (which was working fine) has nearly zero pressure, kind of what the hot was doing when I started.
What the heck do I do next? Replace the whole mixer valve if I can find one? Can't see a brand name on this faucet, it doesn't seem that old and the mixing valve isn't visibly problematic.
Best Answer
Sometimes when you flush your water heater the sediment will get mixed with the water and find it's way to the valves that are under a sink to shut off that water supply. This happened to me. I tried different fixes but finally I had to replace that valve. When I removed it it was full of the sediment from the hot water tank. The sediment could have also gotten into the hoses or orfices in the faucet valves and cause the same problem.
Hope this helps.