Tap repair Manchester

A dripping tap is easy to ignore right up until you get the water bill, or the drip stains the sink, or the washer finally gives up altogether and the tap will not shut off at all. We repair and replace taps across Greater Manchester every working day, and it is one of those jobs where a well-stocked van makes all the difference. Most tap problems are fixed on the first visit, in under an hour, from £70.

The drip: washers and ceramic cartridges

There are really two kinds of tap in Manchester homes. Traditional rising-spindle taps, the sort you turn two or three full rotations, seal with a rubber washer. Those washers harden, crack and stop sealing, and the result is the classic slow drip into the basin. New washers cost pennies and the job is quick, provided the tap comes apart without a fight.

Modern quarter-turn and mixer taps use ceramic disc cartridges instead. When a quarter-turn tap starts to drip or the handle goes stiff or gritty, the cartridge has usually worn or cracked. Cartridges are not all the same, and this is where carrying stock matters: we keep the common sizes and types on the van, so most cartridge swaps happen there and then rather than after a week of waiting for a part.

One wrinkle worth knowing about. On an old tap, if the brass seat inside the body is pitted, a new washer will slow the drip but not stop it. We carry a seat-cutting tool for exactly this, and if the seat is too far gone we will say so and quote for a replacement tap instead of taking your money for a repair that will not hold.

When replacement is the right call

Some taps are not worth saving. Flaking chrome, corrosion around the base, a spout that wobbles because the body has worn, or an obscure model with no spares available: in these cases a new tap is cheaper in the long run than repeat repairs. Tap replacement is also the moment to fix the annoyances you have lived with, like a kitchen tap too short to reach the bowl or bathroom taps that need two hands to operate.

We supply and fit sensible, solid taps, or fit one you have bought yourself. The fitting is usually the easy part. The hard part in older Didsbury semis and Levenshulme terraces is what is underneath: seized back nuts, corroded tails and no isolation valves, which means draining down before anything can be undone. We deal with all of that, and while we are under the sink we will fit isolation valves so the next tap change takes twenty minutes instead of two hours.

Low pressure and slow-running taps

A tap that runs at a dribble is a diagnosis job, not a guess. The usual suspects, roughly in order:

• A clogged aerator on the spout, full of debris and scale. Two minutes to clean.
• An isolation valve under the sink that someone left half-closed.
• Debris in the tap cartridge, often after work on the mains nearby.
• A kinked or undersized flexible connector fitted during a previous kitchen job.
• On upstairs taps in older houses, a tank-fed supply with very little natural pressure, which no amount of tap fettling will change.

We work out which one it is before touching anything, because the fix ranges from a free clean to a conversation about your plumbing layout. If the problem turns out to be a hidden weep or a corroded supply pipe rather than the tap, our leak repair manchester service picks it up in the same visit where possible.

Kitchen taps, bathroom taps and everything attached to them

Kitchen taps get the hardest life in the house, and they sit at the centre of a cluster of pipework, wastes and appliance connections. If your tap change is part of a bigger sort-out, or the problems under the sink go beyond the tap itself, our kitchen plumbing manchester service covers sinks, wastes, appliance plumbing and the rest of it as one job.

Bathroom taps bring their own quirks: basin taps with barely any room to swing a spanner, bath mixers buried behind panels, and monobloc taps held by a single fixing that a previous fitter tightened with hope rather than tools. We have the box spanners and the patience.

And do not forget the tap outside. A garden tap that drips all winter wastes water and invites a freeze. We repair them, and if you have not got one, outside tap installation is a quick job that pays for itself the first time you wash the car without running a hose through the kitchen window.

What it costs

Tap repairs start from £70 for a re-washer or straightforward cartridge swap. Supply-and-fit tap replacement typically lands between £90 and £160 depending on the tap you choose and the state of the fittings underneath. We price the job before we start it, and if we open things up and find something unexpected, we stop and talk to you before the number changes. Our plumber call out fee page sets out how our pricing works across the board.

One visit, sorted

Tap work is bread and butter for us as part of the full range of plumbing services manchester we offer, and we treat it that way: turn up when we said, carry the parts, fix it once. We are based at Vantage Quay in the city centre and cover the whole of Greater Manchester, from Salford and Prestwich out to Stockport and Ashton. Have a look at the areas we cover, then call 0161 533 0201 and tell us what the tap is doing. Nine times out of ten we can tell you the likely fix and the likely price on the phone.