DIY Refit Hansgrohe Plug

One of the worst errors any proud Hansgrohe owner (a 'groher) can make is to attempt to dismantle their sink plug.

Fig 1.0 'grohe mechanism

Per fig 1.0, the plug mechanism is fairly involved. The bottom-most ring (low-ring) seen in fig 1.0 is to be inserted on a protruding 'prong' that is attached to a long arm for raising and lowering the plug to block the plug hole.

If the low-ring is disconnected from the prong then you're in trouble as you have to reconnect it to get a functioning sink plug.
If you have managed to drop any components for this process down the sink (by attempting to unscrew the silver top of the plug, for example), then you will need to buy something like a PUP pickup claw.

Once you have retrieved all the components that are part of the mechanism, you can begin to reassemble using our custom procedure below.

Components

Fig 2.0 Components laid out

Figure 2.0 shows the salient components for this procedure. From left to right: low-ring spike, mid-section and top-lid. Along the bottom sits a common kitchen straw which we'll use later to assemble the plug.

Step 1

If you have small hands you should be able to reattach the low-ring to the spike protruding from the sink inside the plug-hole. To do this, you need to disassemble everything as shown in Fig 2.0. Attaching the low-ring can be a risky operation so you might want to loop a small piece of thread through the low-ring so that you can hold onto it and attempt to reattach it without fear of losing it into the sink and having to retrieve it (as explained earlier).

Step 2

Now you want to reattach the mid-section to the low-ring spike without dropping the low-ring spike down the sink and ruining your hard work. However, you can't really hold onto the low-ring spike while it is attached to the prong as then you haven't got space to put the mid-section on. This is where the drinking straw comes in.

Fig 3.0 Straw usage

Place the drinking straw on top of the low-ring spike (hopefully your drinking straw is the same diameter as mine which was helpfully the right width to fit on top of the spike).

Step 3 

Using the straw you can maintain the position of the spike while lowering the mid-section down the straw. Fig 3.0 attempts to demonstrate this.
Slide the mid-section all the way down to the bottom of the straw and onto the spike. You should then be able to remove the straw and the width of the mid-section will hold the construction in place.

Step 4

Attach the top-section to the mid-section by placing it on top. Simply rotate the top-section to tighten the whole construction.

And there you have it. Now sit back and admire the rare earthly delight that is a fully-functioning 'grohe!