Plumbing - leaking tap or pipe or ???
Discussion
We've got damp problems in the downstairs loo. It seems some of them were present before we bought the house (17 years ago) and hidden by the previous owners, but that's another story.
The one I'm currently trying to properly solve is linked to the hot tap in the room above. It has, it seems, been leaking on and off for a while, eventually wrecking the shelving in the room below. Everything is stripped out downstairs now while I try and fix it. The waste for the bath comes through the floor/ceiling and was boxed in a corner downstairs. We've had a problem with this waste before, and assumed to start with it was something similar, but actually the water was falling away from the waste pipe. A plastic tub on the floor picked up 5-10ml every few days, but it wasn't a constant drip. Water appearing in the tub had no relationship to any use of the bath, shower, anything. For example, once we noticed it dripping just before midnight when no-one had even been in the bathroom since the morning.
Looking up the hole in the ceiling, you can see the waste pipe and the hot water pipe which is all green around the T-joint that takes a pipe upwards to the bath tap:
This is where the water is dripping from, but not where it's starting out from, I believe.
The bath hot water tap upstairs had gone a bit on the wonk, having been knocked a couple of times. I was reluctant to turn it back, in case it unscrewed itself from a joint underneath. I had noticed water around the base of the tap previously, but tended to assume it was from the shower or shower curtain leaving water there. However, drying it all completely showed that some water was appearing there, and running into the bath making a small puddle over several hours. But this seemed to be fairly continual, where the water making it downstairs was not continual at all.
Once I'd bashed the tiles off the side of the bath (when the bathroom was redone, I said "Please just make sure the side of the bath is removeable"... well, it kinda is, just requires a hammer and cold chisel and re-gluing and re-grouting when it goes back together
), this is what I got:
The hot tap is, of course, the one furthest away, with lots of verdigris. Everything was dry, as far as my finger and a sheet of loo roll could tell.
Not being able to identify the leak immediately, I got a glamourous assistant to hold the tap square and tightened up the nut with the red arrow in the first picture as best I could with a slightly too big tap spanner.
Now, all the leaks have stopped. No drips in the tub downstairs, no seeping around the tap base, no wet on any of the pipework.
It seems that tightening that nut has solved the problem, but I don't quite believe it. As I understood it, that wide threaded tail coming out of the tap is a solid part of the tap itself... but the only way I can see tightening the nut fixing the leak is if that is not the case, there is a joint inside the tap somewhere, and the nut I turned has rotated the whole tail inside the tap, or otherwise pulled something down tight enough to seal it again.
While it's tempting to chalk up a win and put everything back together, I'm not convinced that there's not something still basically wrong and I'd only be storing up trouble for the future. And I'm not sure how/why it was arriving downstairs intermittently either - could it follow that twisty flexi all the way down?
If anyone can shed any light on all this, I'd be very grateful!
The one I'm currently trying to properly solve is linked to the hot tap in the room above. It has, it seems, been leaking on and off for a while, eventually wrecking the shelving in the room below. Everything is stripped out downstairs now while I try and fix it. The waste for the bath comes through the floor/ceiling and was boxed in a corner downstairs. We've had a problem with this waste before, and assumed to start with it was something similar, but actually the water was falling away from the waste pipe. A plastic tub on the floor picked up 5-10ml every few days, but it wasn't a constant drip. Water appearing in the tub had no relationship to any use of the bath, shower, anything. For example, once we noticed it dripping just before midnight when no-one had even been in the bathroom since the morning.
Looking up the hole in the ceiling, you can see the waste pipe and the hot water pipe which is all green around the T-joint that takes a pipe upwards to the bath tap:
This is where the water is dripping from, but not where it's starting out from, I believe.
The bath hot water tap upstairs had gone a bit on the wonk, having been knocked a couple of times. I was reluctant to turn it back, in case it unscrewed itself from a joint underneath. I had noticed water around the base of the tap previously, but tended to assume it was from the shower or shower curtain leaving water there. However, drying it all completely showed that some water was appearing there, and running into the bath making a small puddle over several hours. But this seemed to be fairly continual, where the water making it downstairs was not continual at all.
Once I'd bashed the tiles off the side of the bath (when the bathroom was redone, I said "Please just make sure the side of the bath is removeable"... well, it kinda is, just requires a hammer and cold chisel and re-gluing and re-grouting when it goes back together
), this is what I got:The hot tap is, of course, the one furthest away, with lots of verdigris. Everything was dry, as far as my finger and a sheet of loo roll could tell.
Not being able to identify the leak immediately, I got a glamourous assistant to hold the tap square and tightened up the nut with the red arrow in the first picture as best I could with a slightly too big tap spanner.
Now, all the leaks have stopped. No drips in the tub downstairs, no seeping around the tap base, no wet on any of the pipework.
It seems that tightening that nut has solved the problem, but I don't quite believe it. As I understood it, that wide threaded tail coming out of the tap is a solid part of the tap itself... but the only way I can see tightening the nut fixing the leak is if that is not the case, there is a joint inside the tap somewhere, and the nut I turned has rotated the whole tail inside the tap, or otherwise pulled something down tight enough to seal it again.
While it's tempting to chalk up a win and put everything back together, I'm not convinced that there's not something still basically wrong and I'd only be storing up trouble for the future. And I'm not sure how/why it was arriving downstairs intermittently either - could it follow that twisty flexi all the way down?
If anyone can shed any light on all this, I'd be very grateful!
RGG said:
Isn't this where there is minor seep?
The top of the flexible hose and by tightening the tap retaining nut, the movement has had a secondary effect of "resealing" the leak (Or maybe not for permanence?)
RGG said:
It looks like it's both the tap seal (rubber washer / ceramic disc) and the flexible connecter?
And time to replace now.
That's what I would be doing.
And time to replace now.
That's what I would be doing.
miroku1 said:
Personally I d remove those taps and replace with some superior quality, as you now have access just replace the section of pipework beneath down to the tee , as previously mentioned, rigid pipework would be preferable
Seems like a sensible consensus... can I get some pointers on choosing superior quality taps, as opposed to just expensive ones? (That is, superior quality against the current field... superior quality to the ones we have already is probably a low bar 
). I find it hard to work out when every Chineseium product from 50p up all claim to be the best thing ever, and many ££££ taps look identical to £ taps to me! We have some Bristans and they still work well.
And as you seem to be able to get in there to do the tap up furthest away, maybe a mixer?
Check the hole centres first but i think most are standard 180mm if thats what you have.
But, doing that you may also need to sort out the pipework at the same time!
Good luck!
And as you seem to be able to get in there to do the tap up furthest away, maybe a mixer?
Check the hole centres first but i think most are standard 180mm if thats what you have.
But, doing that you may also need to sort out the pipework at the same time!
Good luck!
The pressures on the hot and cold are too unbalanced for a mixer to work well (even on the sink downstairs which has a better head for the hot water) - we fitted a thermostatically regulated mixer in the other bathroom, and it's not working particularly well and is up for replacement again some time.
I'm not at all sure my plumbing skills are up to extending the very-not-centered-on-axis copper, so I'm afraid there will be flexis again. On the bright side, I was pleased to re-discover the other thing I've been trying to get fitted everywhere - isolating valves - did get put in here, so it should be much less of a ballache that it might have been.
I'll pass Vitra and Bristan on to the artistic dept (SWMBO) for consideration
I'm not at all sure my plumbing skills are up to extending the very-not-centered-on-axis copper, so I'm afraid there will be flexis again. On the bright side, I was pleased to re-discover the other thing I've been trying to get fitted everywhere - isolating valves - did get put in here, so it should be much less of a ballache that it might have been.
I'll pass Vitra and Bristan on to the artistic dept (SWMBO) for consideration
A week or so later, and with no obvious reason (It hasn't been used for about 24 hours, I had a bath yesterday but a shower this morning), the hot tap is leaking again - a fair bit more this time looking at the tub downstairs.
The wet around the base of the tap is back, along with the run into the tub - there's a drip in photo as I've broken the run with a finger wipe:
The floor under the bath is quite wet:
The pipework is wet all the way down, and there are drips coming off the curve in the flexi and from the big nut securing the tap (at 9 o'clock in the photo, it's not very clear):
So the hot tap is definitely the cause of this leak. I still don't understand how it appears to be randomly leaking internally, but the new taps are ordered and on their way, so there's an old towel down for now, and probably a job for the weekend.
The wet around the base of the tap is back, along with the run into the tub - there's a drip in photo as I've broken the run with a finger wipe:
The floor under the bath is quite wet:
The pipework is wet all the way down, and there are drips coming off the curve in the flexi and from the big nut securing the tap (at 9 o'clock in the photo, it's not very clear):
So the hot tap is definitely the cause of this leak. I still don't understand how it appears to be randomly leaking internally, but the new taps are ordered and on their way, so there's an old towel down for now, and probably a job for the weekend.
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