Leaking taps and running toilets

A dripping tap is the job everyone puts off. It is only a drip. Then the water bill arrives.

What it usually is

• A tap that drips after you turn it off. Nearly always a worn washer, seat or O-ring on an older tap, or a worn cartridge on a mixer.
• A tap that is hard to turn off or squeals when you turn it on. Same story, worn parts inside the tap body.
• A toilet that keeps running after the flush, or hisses quietly all day. That is the cistern. Either the outlet valve is not sealing, so water trickles into the bowl, or the inlet valve is not shutting off, so the cistern overflows down the overflow pipe. Both are cheap parts, and both waste a startling amount of water.
• A toilet leaking at the base, or at the back where the cistern meets the pan. That is a seal, and it needs fixing before the floor around it does.
• Water under the sink from a flexi hose or a trap. Flexi hoses do not last forever. If yours look old and rusty, they are worth replacing before they burst, which they tend to do while you are on holiday.

How much water are we talking

A tap dripping once a second wastes thousands of litres a year. A running toilet can waste far more than that, because it never stops. If your water bill has crept up and nothing else has changed, a running cistern is the first thing to check. Put a few drops of food colouring in the cistern, wait twenty minutes without flushing, and if colour turns up in the bowl, there is your leak.

What Brad does

He carries washers, seats, O-rings, cartridges and cistern parts on the ute, so most tap and toilet jobs are done in one visit. He re-seats the tap properly rather than just swapping the washer, because a new washer on a pitted seat will start dripping again in a month.

For toilets, he replaces the inlet or outlet valve, or the whole cistern if the old one has had its day. If the toilet is old enough that parts are hard to get, he will say so and give you a price on a new one.

While he is there he will check the other taps, the toilet stop tap and the flexi hoses, because it is cheaper for you if he does it all in one go than if you ring him back next month for the ensuite.

Water efficiency

If you are chasing a lower bill, Brad can fit water-efficient tapware, aerators and dual-flush cisterns, and check that nothing is leaking underground between the meter and the house. See water leaks if you suspect the problem is bigger than a tap.