A dripping tap wastes up to 5,500 litres of water a year and the constant tap-tap in the night is enough to drive anyone mad. The good news is that most drips come down to a worn washer or cartridge costing a few pounds, and many homeowners can sort it themselves in under an hour. Here is how we approach it, and how to know when it is genuinely a job for a plumber.
Almost every dripping tap has one of two causes. Older taps with separate hot and cold handles that turn several times usually rely on a rubber washer that compresses against a seat to stop the flow. Over years of use the rubber hardens, splits or wears flat, and water sneaks past. Modern quarter turn and mixer taps use ceramic disc cartridges instead, and when those discs crack or the seals around them perish, you get the same steady drip.
Around Brighton and Hove our water comes from the chalk aquifer beneath the South Downs, which makes it some of the hardest in the country at roughly 280 to 350 mg/l of calcium carbonate. That limescale builds up on washers, seats and cartridges, so taps here tend to fail sooner than in soft water areas. It also means parts can be crusted in place, which is worth knowing before you put a wrench on anything.
Nothing ruins a Saturday like water spraying across the kitchen because the supply was still live. Look under the sink or basin for a small isolation valve on the pipe feeding the tap and turn its screw slot a quarter turn with a flathead screwdriver. If there is no isolation valve, turn off the main stopcock, usually under the kitchen sink in most Brighton terraces and flats, then open the tap fully to drain the last of the water. Put the plug in the plughole so tiny screws cannot vanish down the waste.
Prise off the decorative hot or cold cap on top of the handle to reveal a retaining screw, undo it and lift the handle off. Beneath it sits the headgear, a brass hexagonal nut. Hold the tap body steady with one hand, or wrap it in a cloth and grip it with pliers, then undo the headgear anticlockwise with the spanner. Steady pressure beats brute force here, because twisting hard against an unsupported tap can crack a ceramic basin.
With the headgear out, you will see the washer on the bottom, held by a small nut or pushed onto a stub. Swap it for a new one of the same size, and while everything is apart, soak the parts in vinegar for twenty minutes to shift the limescale. If the brass seat inside the tap body feels rough or pitted, that is often why washers keep failing; a reseating tool can grind it flat, though at that point many people sensibly replace the tap. Reassemble, restore the water and check for drips.
Quarter turn taps have no washer to change. Instead, remove the handle the same way, unscrew the retaining nut and lift out the ceramic cartridge. Take the old cartridge to a plumbers merchant, and there are several good ones around Brighton, Hove and Portslade, to match it exactly, because sizes and spline counts vary a lot between manufacturers. Cartridges typically cost between £10 and £25. Fit the new one, making sure hot goes on the hot side, and reassemble.
Kitchen mixer taps with a single lever follow the same idea but the cartridge sits under the lever body, sometimes beneath a shroud that unscrews by hand. If yours drips from the base of the spout rather than the end, the culprit is usually the O rings on the spout itself, which are even cheaper to replace.
Be honest with yourself if the headgear will not budge, the tap is seized with scale, there are no isolation valves, or the stopcock itself will not turn. Forcing corroded fittings in an older property can shear a pipe and turn a five pound repair into an emergency. A straightforward tap repair or replacement is a quick visit for a plumber, and although prices depend on access, parts and the age of the plumbing, most local firms charge somewhere in the region of £60 to £120 in labour for this kind of job.
If your taps keep failing every year or two, mention it when you book. Persistent drips are sometimes a symptom of high mains pressure or ageing pipework rather than bad luck, and fitting isolation valves while the water is off makes every future repair simpler. We cover Brighton, Hove and the surrounding Sussex villages, and we would always rather tell you a tap is a simple DIY fix than charge you to find out.
A pack of assorted washers costs £2 to £4 and a ceramic cartridge is usually £10 to £25, so a DIY repair rarely tops £25. Factor in a bottle of descaler, because hard Sussex water means limescale is nearly always part of the problem.
Yes, if you are on a meter. A steady drip can waste over 5,000 litres a year, and a hot tap dripping also wastes the energy used to heat that water, so it is worth fixing promptly.
Usually the brass seat inside the tap body has become pitted by scale, so even a new washer cannot seal against it. The seat can be reground with a reseating tool, but if the tap is old it is often more economical to replace it.