by
Tom Plumb
December 12, 2024
This week, a customer in Burwood had several leaking taps throughout their home. The major leak was coming from a kitchen flickmixer tap which had seen its day!
It was old and tired, so we replaced it with one of our quality chrome kitchen mixer taps. The new tap that we installed has a five year warranty on the taps cartridge and is suitable to the home’s high water pressure and hot water temperature.
We fitted some new isolating stops to both the hot and cold supply under the kitchen bench so our customer could turn off the water supply to the new kitchen mixer tap from inside the home. This provides easy isolation of the water supply for future maintenance and you can then also isolate a problem without turning the water off to all the fixtures of the home. It also helps to have these isolating stops fitted to help balance out the different flow rates between the hot and cold water supply.
The customer was aware of the waste of water and was surprised at how easily it added up.
Each tap that leaks one drop of water per second, will add $1 to your monthly water bill. If you have three leaking taps in your household, that’s a waste of $36 per year. Not to mention the wasted water – each dripping tap will waste between 30 and 200 litres of water per day!
There are several reasons that taps may leak, here are some of them!
1) Turning the tap off too tightly splits the washer and causes leaks.
2) Wear and tear simply over time the washer will wear out from being turned on and off, this will cause a leak.
3) Dirt and grit getting flushed through the line and lodging into the washer seat.
4) Cheap washers that have a short life span are used sometimes.
5) The hot water washer can split due to the rubber expanding and contracting.
These are the most common reasons of leaking taps.
At Tom Plumb, we carry a range of exclusive quality tapware for that quick replacement, including quality kitchen flickmixer taps. We only use proven and trusted washers and seals for our repairs and advise our customer of the best solution to those annoying leaking taps around the home.
Plumber on Call: 0418 328767
