How to Fix a Dripping Tap in Under Thirty Minutes

A tap that drips once a second wastes roughly five thousand litres a year. If it is the hot tap, you are also paying to heat every one of those litres.

The repair is genuinely simple. The reason people call a plumber is not the difficulty, it is the fear of the bit at the start — turning the water off and taking the handle apart without knowing what is underneath.

What you need

• An adjustable spanner
• A flat and a cross-head screwdriver
• Replacement washers or a ceramic cartridge, matched to your tap
• A cloth and an old towel

Time: twenty to thirty minutes. Difficulty: genuinely beginner.

Work out which type of tap you have

There are two families, and the fix differs.

Traditional taps turn several full rotations from off to fully open. Inside is a rubber washer pressing onto a seat. When the washer hardens or splits, it drips.

Quarter-turn taps go from off to on in a ninety degree twist. Inside is a ceramic disc cartridge. These do not have washers, and the whole cartridge is replaced.

The steps

1. Turn off the water. Look under the sink for isolation valves — small in-line valves with a slot. Turn the slot so it sits across the pipe rather than along it. If there are none, turn off the main stopcock.
2. Open the tap and let it drain. This releases pressure and confirms the water is genuinely off. If it keeps running, the valve has not seated.
3. Plug the plughole. With a cloth, not hope. The screw you are about to remove is small and the drain is exactly its size.
4. Remove the handle. There is usually a decorative cap on top — hot, cold, or the brand logo — which prises off with a flat screwdriver. Under it is a retaining screw. Undo it and lift the handle off.
5. Unscrew the valve body. Use the adjustable spanner on the hexagonal nut beneath. Hold the tap body steady with your other hand so you are not twisting the whole fitting against the sink.
6. Replace the part. On a traditional tap, the washer sits at the bottom of the valve, held by a small nut. Swap it. On a quarter-turn tap, lift the whole cartridge out and drop the new one in the same orientation.
7. Reassemble in reverse. Tighten firmly but do not force it. Overtightening cracks ceramic and deforms washers, which causes the drip you just fixed.
8. Turn the water back on slowly. Open the tap first so air escapes without hammering the pipes.

When it still drips

If the drip continues with a new washer, the seat the washer presses against is probably pitted with limescale or corrosion. You can buy a reseating tool for the price of a takeaway, which grinds the seat flat again. It takes about a minute per tap.

If a quarter-turn tap still drips with a new cartridge, check you have the right handedness — hot and cold cartridges rotate in opposite directions and a mismatched one will not close fully.

If water is escaping from around the base of the spout rather than out of it, that is a different seal — the O-ring on the spout body — and a different, equally cheap part.

The part everybody gets wrong

Turning the mains water off and then forgetting the immersion heater or combi boiler is still full. Nothing dangerous happens with a tap repair, but if you have drained the system and then run the hot water, you can pull air into places you did not intend.

For a single tap, use the isolation valves under the sink if you have them. It keeps the rest of the house working and confines the job to one fitting.