Tap Maintenance: Stop Drips Before They Start

A dripping tap is the plumbing problem people put off longest, and it's the one with the worst cost-to-effort ratio. A slow drip wastes roughly 20,000 litres a year. The part that fixes it usually costs a few dollars.

Here's what actually goes wrong with taps, and what you can do about it.

Why taps drip

Nearly every dripping tap comes down to one of three things.

Worn washers or O-rings. On traditional tap sets, a rubber washer presses against a seat to stop the flow. Rubber perishes. When it does, the tap drips no matter how hard you turn it.

A damaged valve seat. The brass surface the washer presses against gets pitted over time, usually from grit in the water or from someone over-tightening the tap for months. A new washer on a damaged seat will drip again within weeks — the seat needs re-grinding, which needs a tool most people don't own.

A failed ceramic cartridge. Modern mixer taps use a ceramic disc cartridge instead of a washer. They last a long time but they do fail, and they're replaced as a unit rather than repaired.

Stop turning it harder

This is the single most useful thing in this article.

When a tap starts to drip, the instinct is to turn it off harder. That does stop the drip briefly — by crushing an already-worn washer harder against the seat. What it actually does is chew up the valve seat.

A five-dollar washer job becomes a re-seating job, and eventually a full tap replacement. If a tap needs force to stop dripping, it needs a washer, not more force.

Cleaning the aerator

If a tap's flow has dropped off or sprays unevenly, the aerator is almost always the cause — not a pressure problem.

The aerator is the small screen in the tap spout.

1. Unscrew it by hand. If it's tight, wrap the spout in a cloth first and use multi-grips gently so you don't mark the chrome.
2. Take out the screens and note the order they came in.
3. Soak everything in white vinegar for an hour to dissolve the mineral scale.
4. Scrub gently with an old toothbrush and rinse.
5. Reassemble in the same order and hand-tighten.

Worth doing once a year. It takes ten minutes and it restores flow that people often assume is a mains pressure issue.

The annual once-over

• Check under every sink and vanity for damp patches or corrosion on the flexible hoses.
• Replace flexible braided hoses every 5–8 years. These are a genuinely common cause of catastrophic water damage — they fail suddenly and at full mains pressure. If yours have no visible date, they're old.
• Test the isolation valves under each fixture so you know they turn when you need them.
• Clean aerators on the taps you use most.
• Listen for water hammer — banging when a tap closes. It fatigues joints over time and eventually causes the burst you're trying to avoid.

What you can do yourself

Replacing a washer on a standard tap set is well within most people's ability, as long as you isolate the water first and don't force anything.

When to call a plumber

• The tap still drips after a new washer — the seat is damaged
• The tap body itself is leaking, not the spout
• You have a mixer tap that needs a new cartridge and can't identify the model
• Water is leaking inside the vanity or under the sink
• The isolation valve won't turn, or leaks when you turn it
• You have water hammer throughout the house

That last one is worth acting on. Water hammer is a pressure problem, and left alone it works joints loose across the whole system.

If you're in the Hills District, Hornsby or the Upper North Shore and something needs looking at, get in touch — there's no call-out fee and no charge to quote.