A dripping tap and a cistern that runs are the two most common plumbing faults in Australian homes, and both go straight onto your water bill every day until someone fixes them. They are also cheap to fix compared with almost anything else we do.
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Could not send just now. Call Luke 0423 213 079 or Zach 0402 273 744, or email admin@bmadvanced.com.au
A dripping tap is usually a perished washer or a worn ceramic disc cartridge, and a toilet that keeps running is usually a failed inlet valve or outlet valve seal in the cistern. Both waste water continuously and both are among the cheapest plumbing repairs available. A running toilet in particular can waste a substantial volume every day without making any noise you would notice, and it is one of the most common causes of an unexplained rise in a water bill. Both are licensed plumbing work in New South Wales when they involve more than replacing a washer.
People put these off because they are minor. They are minor in difficulty, not in cost.
If you have had an unexplained jump in your water bill, check every toilet in the house with the food colouring test before you assume you have a hidden leak. It is the most common culprit and the cheapest thing to rule out. If the toilets are fine, read burst pipes and leaks.
Traditional taps with washers, quarter-turn ceramic disc taps and mixer cartridges are all different repairs with different parts. A photo when you book helps us arrive with what we need.
We shut off at the isolation valve or the meter, open it up and look at the washer, the jumper valve, the seat and the spindle. Often the seat itself is worn and needs re-seating, which is why a new washer alone sometimes does not last.
Most taps are worth repairing. Some tapware, especially cheap fittings or badly corroded ones, costs more to keep repairing than to replace. We tell you which yours is and let you choose.
Inlet valve, outlet valve and seal, plus the water level. We would rather replace the failing part than adjust something to hide the symptom.
If pipes are banging, we look at why, because it is doing quiet damage to the rest of the system.
If we are already on site, having a quick look at the other taps and toilets costs you nothing and often saves a second callout. We will tell you what we found and you can decide what to do about it.
These are the smallest jobs we do, and the price is mostly about how many of them there are and what parts are involved.
This is the one area where we will actively suggest you save up jobs. If a tap has been dripping for a month, add it to the list, have a look around for anything else, and get it all done in one visit.
Nobody rings a plumber excited about a dripping tap. It is the plumbing equivalent of a light globe you have been meaning to change. The difference is that the tap is costing you money every single day.
If your water bill has gone up and you cannot explain it, check every toilet in the house before you do anything else. Put food colouring in the cistern, wait twenty minutes, and look in the pan. Colour in the pan means water is escaping past the outlet valve and being silently replaced, around the clock. It makes no noise, it leaves no mark, and it is the single most common cause of a mystery bill we come across.
Only once the toilets are ruled out is it worth worrying about a hidden leak, which is a much bigger and more expensive problem.
A traditional tap works by pressing a rubber washer down onto a brass seat. Over years, grit and water wear a groove into the seat itself. Put a fresh washer onto a damaged seat and it seals for a while and then starts dripping again, which is why plenty of people conclude that washers do not last. Re-seating the tap, which means machining the seat back to a clean flat surface, is what makes the repair hold. It is a small extra step and it is the difference between fixing it and postponing it.
The most expensive part of a tap washer is the plumber's travel. If you have one dripping tap, walk around the house first: check the other taps, check the outdoor taps, do the food colouring test on every toilet, look under the vanities and the kitchen sink for damp, and check whether the laundry taps have started weeping. Then book it all as one visit. Nine times out of ten there is more than one thing, and doing them together is straightforwardly better value than getting a plumber out three times in a year.
In the older housing across the North Shore and the original bathrooms in Hills homes from the sixties and seventies, fittings have often been in place for decades and can be seized or corroded. That is the situation where a determined homeowner with a large spanner creates a genuine problem, because a snapped fitting inside a tiled wall is no longer a tap job. If it will not move with reasonable force, that is the moment to stop and call someone.
Call Luke on 0423 213 079 or Zach on 0402 273 744, or send the form with a list of what needs doing and we will come back to you within 12 hours.
Send it all through in one go. Taps, toilets, a slow drain, an outdoor tap that weeps. One visit is better value than three. Every enquiry answered within 12 hours.
Three quick steps. Every enquiry answered within 12 hours. If it's urgent, use the numbers.
Could not send just now. Call Luke 0423 213 079 or Zach 0402 273 744, or email admin@bmadvanced.com.au
