There is no valve under my sink. Where do I turn the water off?

At the main, which on most properties here sits by the water meter at the boundary or just inside the gate, under a small concrete cover. Almost every guide you will find for this assumes a small isolation valve on the pipe under the sink, because almost every guide is American. Plenty of kitchens and bathrooms here were plumbed without one. It is not a fault and it does not need fixing; it just means the whole house is off while you work, so fill a pail first.

What is the drip actually costing me?

Less than people fear, and more than nothing. A tap dripping once a second loses roughly a quarter of a millilitre each time. There are 86,400 seconds in a day, so that is about 21 litres a day, or close to 0.65 cubic metres a month on your bill. A steady trickle rather than a drip is a different matter and can be ten times that. The honest reason to fix it is usually the noise and the stained basin rather than the bill.

I replaced the washer and it still drips. What now?

Then the seat is worn, not the washer. The seat is the brass ring the washer presses against, and years of grit have left a ridge on it that no new washer will seal against. It can be re-cut with a seat dresser, or the whole tap can be replaced, and on an inexpensive tap replacing it is usually the sensible choice. This is the point at which it stops being a ten-minute job.

Which faucet problems are not a plumbing job at all?

Anything on an electric or instant water heater tap where the leak is at the unit rather than at the spout. If water is coming from the body of a heater, switch it off at the breaker and leave it. That is an appliance fault and often an electrical one, and it wants the heater attended to before the plumbing.

Your tap is dripping. Here is what it is telling you.

Where the water appears on the gripo tells you which part has failed, and one of them you can change yourself in about ten minutes. Here is which is which, and where it stops being your job.

Call 0920 960 0596 Faucet and shower work

First, the thing every other guide gets wrong here

Search this and the first instruction, every time, is to close the small isolation valve on the pipe under the sink. The pages saying it are American, and one of them is the water department of Portland, Oregon.

A great many kitchens and bathrooms here have no such valve. That is not a fault and it does not need fixing. It means you close the main instead, out by the meter, and the whole house is off while you work. So fill a pail before you start, and tell whoever else is in the house what you are about to do.

What the drip is telling you

It drips from the spout when the tap is fully closed

The washer or the seat. On an older compression tap, the kind you turn several times to close, it is the rubber washer nine times out of ten and it is the cheapest part in the house. On a quarter-turn tap it is the ceramic disc cartridge instead, which is not a washer and cannot be filed or packed.

It seeps around the handle when the tap is running

The O-ring or the gland packing on the spindle, not the washer. Changing the washer will not touch this one, which is why people change the washer, find it still leaking and conclude the tap is beyond help.

It leaks at the base of the spout on a mixer

The larger O-rings where the spout swivels. Common, cheap, and slightly more fiddly because the spout has to come off.

It leaks underneath, at the pipe rather than the tap

A compression fitting or the flexible hose. Not a tap fault at all. Worth saying because the water appears in the same cabinet and gets blamed on the tap.

The ten-minute one: changing a washer

This is for a compression tap that drips from the spout when closed. If yours is a quarter-turn or a single-lever mixer, this is not your repair and forcing it will cost you a cartridge.

Close the main and open the tap to let the pressure out. Put the plug in, so nothing small goes down the drain.
Prise off the little cap on top of the handle, undo the screw under it, and lift the handle off. If it is stuck, warm water on a cloth around the base usually frees it.
Unscrew the headgear nut with a spanner, holding the tap body with your other hand so you are not twisting the whole thing off the sink.
The washer is on the bottom of the spindle, held by a small nut. Take the old one with you to buy the new one: size matters and there is no standard.
Reassemble, open the main slowly, and run the tap for a minute before deciding it worked.

If the headgear nut will not move with reasonable force, stop. On old taps the body will shear before the nut gives, and a ten-minute job becomes a new tap and a hole in the sink.

Where it stops being your job

A new washer that still drips. The seat is worn and needs re-cutting or the tap needs replacing.
A ceramic disc cartridge. It is a sealed part, it cannot be adjusted, and getting the right one usually means identifying the tap.
Anything still wet with the main closed. That is not the tap.
Water at the body of an electric or instant heater. Switch it off at the breaker and leave it: that is an appliance fault, often an electrical one, and it wants the heater looked at before the plumbing.
More than one tap dripping at once, which points at pressure rather than washers.

Questions about dripping taps

There is no valve under my sink. Where do I turn the water off?: At the main, which on most properties here sits by the water meter at the boundary or just inside the gate, under a small concrete cover. Almost every guide you will find for this assumes a small isolation valve on the pipe under the sink, because almost every guide is American. Plenty of kitchens and bathrooms here were plumbed without one. It is not a fault and it does not need fixing; it just means the whole house is off while you work, so fill a pail first.
What is the drip actually costing me?: Less than people fear, and more than nothing. A tap dripping once a second loses roughly a quarter of a millilitre each time. There are 86,400 seconds in a day, so that is about 21 litres a day, or close to 0.65 cubic metres a month on your bill. A steady trickle rather than a drip is a different matter and can be ten times that. The honest reason to fix it is usually the noise and the stained basin rather than the bill.
I replaced the washer and it still drips. What now?: Then the seat is worn, not the washer. The seat is the brass ring the washer presses against, and years of grit have left a ridge on it that no new washer will seal against. It can be re-cut with a seat dresser, or the whole tap can be replaced, and on an inexpensive tap replacing it is usually the sensible choice. This is the point at which it stops being a ten-minute job.
Which faucet problems are not a plumbing job at all?: Anything on an electric or instant water heater tap where the leak is at the unit rather than at the spout. If water is coming from the body of a heater, switch it off at the breaker and leave it. That is an appliance fault and often an electrical one, and it wants the heater attended to before the plumbing.

If the nut will not move, stop

A sheared tap body is a much bigger job than a washer. Ring us and describe what you are looking at.

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