A dripping tap wastes somewhere between 15 and 90 litres a day depending on how fast it drips, and in a Brighton home on hard chalk water it usually means a worn washer or a scaled up ceramic cartridge. Most drips can be fixed in under an hour with a few pounds of parts. This guide walks through diagnosing the tap, doing the repair, and spotting the jobs that are not worth the DIY gamble.
Nearly every domestic tap falls into one of two camps. Traditional taps with a rubber washer turn several times to shut off and have been fitted in Brighton terraces and Victorian semis for decades. Quarter turn taps, including most mixers and monobloc kitchen taps, use a ceramic disc cartridge and close with a short twist.
The fix is different for each. A compression tap almost always drips because the rubber washer at the bottom of the spindle has hardened or split. A quarter turn tap drips because the ceramic discs have picked up limescale or grit, or the rubber seals under the cartridge have failed. Brighton and Hove sits on chalk, and Southern Water reports hardness figures above 280 mg per litre in much of the city, so scale is the usual culprit round here.
Isolate the water first. Look for a small isolation valve on the pipe under the sink or basin and turn the screw slot a quarter turn so it sits across the pipe. If there is no isolator, turn off the mains stopcock, usually under the kitchen sink, then open the tap to drain the pressure. Put the plug in so you do not lose screws down the waste.
Prise off the top cap, remove the retaining screw and lift off the handle. Unscrew the headgear with an adjustable spanner, wrapping a cloth around any chrome to avoid scratching it. At the bottom of the headgear you will find the washer, held by a small nut or pushed onto a peg. Replace it with a matching size. Half inch washers fit most basin and kitchen taps, three quarter inch fit bath taps, and a mixed pack from a plumbers merchant on the Lewes Road or Hove costs around three to five pounds.
Before reassembling, look at the brass seat inside the tap body. If it is pitted or crusted with scale the new washer will not seal properly. A reseating tool costs about ten pounds and takes two minutes to use, or you can fit a nylon seat insert. Reassemble, turn the water back on slowly and check for drips.
Ceramic cartridges are not usually repairable, so the job is to replace the cartridge. Remove the handle, unscrew the shroud, and lift the cartridge out with a spanner on the flats. Take the old one with you when buying a replacement because sizes and spline counts vary between brands. Generic cartridges cost eight to twenty pounds. Branded ones from Bristan, Grohe or Hansgrohe can be thirty to sixty pounds, but they last much longer in hard water.
If the tap is under ten years old and the drip is slow, it is sometimes worth soaking the cartridge in white vinegar overnight to dissolve the scale, then rinsing and refitting. It buys time rather than a permanent fix, but it costs nothing.
Monobloc kitchen taps with a pull out spray hose often drip because the hose connections under the sink have loosened or the non return valves have failed. Check there before condemning the cartridge.
Some jobs are genuinely worth handing over. If the isolation valve or stopcock is seized, forcing it can crack the fitting and turn a drip into a flood. Corroded tap headgear that will not budge, especially on older basin taps in flats along the seafront where salt air speeds up corrosion, can shear off and damage the basin.
If the tap body itself is cracked, the seat is badly worn, or the tap is a cheap discontinued model with no spare cartridge available, replacing the whole tap is usually the better economic choice. A new pair of basin taps runs from about twenty five pounds upwards for parts, and a straightforward swap takes a plumber one to two hours.
For a callout in Brighton and Hove, expect to pay in the region of sixty to one hundred and twenty pounds for a simple tap repair depending on the tap, access and parts. A full tap replacement typically lands between one hundred and two hundred and fifty pounds including labour, with the tap itself on top. Anyone quoting far below that for a callout is probably making it up in parts.
Usually the brass seat inside the tap is scaled or pitted, so the new washer cannot sit flat. Reseat it with a reseating tool or fit a nylon seat insert, and consider a hard water filter if it keeps happening.
With water this hard, a softener or scale inhibitor noticeably extends the life of taps, showers and boilers. It is a bigger spend, typically several hundred pounds fitted, so it makes most sense if you are replacing several fittings or a boiler anyway.
A slow drip is not an emergency, but it wastes water, stains the basin with scale, and on a hot tap it costs you money to heat water that goes straight down the drain. Fix it within a few weeks rather than months.