Nobody wants to hear “you’ll need new tapware” for a drip that started last Tuesday. Especially when the tap looks fine, matches the vanity, and cost a fortune during the renovation.
Good news: most leaking taps in Sydney homes are a parts problem, not a tap problem. Something small inside has worn out, and the fix is to replace that part while the tap stays exactly where it is. The trick is knowing which part, because the spot the water comes from usually tells you before anyone picks up a spanner.
TL;DR
- Most drips are caused by a worn washer, jumper valve, O-ring or ceramic cartridge. All of those are replaceable without touching the tap body.
- Where the water appears is the diagnosis. Spout drip means the sealing washer or cartridge. Water around the handle means O-rings. Water under the cupboard usually means the connection, not the tap.
- If a new washer only lasts a few weeks, the tap seat is chewed up or your water pressure is too high. Reseating and a pressure check fix the cause, not just the symptom.
- Taps that genuinely can’t be saved: cracked bodies, corroded spindles, and obsolete mixers where nobody makes the cartridge anymore.
- In NSW, tap work sits close to licensed territory and pressurised supply lines aren’t worth guessing on. If you’re not certain, get a licensed plumber to look.
- Jasco fixes leaking taps across Sydney with a fixed price before work starts and no callout fee for new customers. Call 02 5950 5382 or book online.
Start with where the water is actually coming from
Stand there for thirty seconds and watch it properly. A drip from the spout is a completely different repair to water seeping out around the base, even though both get described on the phone as “my tap’s leaking”.
Dripping from the spout while the tap is off
This is the classic. The part that’s meant to seal the water off has stopped sealing. On an older-style tap with separate hot and cold handles, that’s the washer or jumper valve. On a single-lever mixer, it’s the ceramic cartridge. Either way, the tap body isn’t the problem.
Water weeping around the handle when you turn it on
Look for a small trickle that runs down the spindle and pools on the benchtop or basin. That’s usually a perished O-ring on the spindle or cartridge. The tap still shuts off fine, it just leaks while it’s running. Again, a parts job.
Damp inside the cupboard under the sink
If the tap itself looks dry but the cupboard base is swollen or smells musty, the leak is probably at the flexible hose, the connection nut, or an isolating valve. Nothing to do with the tap’s internals. Worth catching early, because a slow leak into a particleboard cabinet does more damage than the drip you can hear.
Water coming out of the wall behind the tap
Wall-mounted taps sit on a body that’s buried in the wall. If water shows up at the tiles or on the wall below rather than at the spout, stop investigating and call someone. That’s behind-the-wall pipework, and it’s the one on this list that turns into a real repair if it’s left. Our post on warning signs a pipe is about to burst covers what else to look for.
Spray or dribble at the tip of the spout
Often just a blocked aerator, full of the grit and mineral flecks that come through older galvanised or copper lines. Not really a leak at all.
The parts that get replaced in a tap repair
Here’s what’s actually swapped when a tap gets fixed rather than replaced.
- Washer or jumper valve. The rubber disc that presses onto the seat when you turn the tap off. Wears flat, hardens, or splits. The most common cause of a spout drip on older tapware.
- O-rings. Small rubber rings on the spindle or cartridge body. They perish with heat and age, which is why the hot tap usually goes first.
- Ceramic disc cartridge. The heart of a mixer tap. When it wears or gets grit in it, the lever feels loose or the tap won’t quite shut. Replace the cartridge and the tap works like new.
- Spindle or tap valve. The whole mechanism the handle turns. Swapped out when the thread is worn or the tap has gone stiff and grindy.
- Tap seat. Not replaced so much as re-cut. More on this below, because it’s the reason plenty of “fixed” taps start dripping again.
All of those are small parts. On a straightforward job, a leaking tap repair is one of the quicker visits a plumber does, as we covered in how long a typical plumbing job takes.
Why your tap started dripping again a month later
This is the complaint we hear most often, and it’s almost never bad luck.
The tap seat is damaged. The seat is the brass ring the washer presses onto. Years of grit and over-tightening leave it pitted and scored. Put a brand new washer onto a rough seat and it chews through in weeks. The fix is to re-cut the seat so it’s flat again, then fit the new washer. Skip that step and you’re just resetting the clock.
Your water pressure is too high. High incoming pressure hammers washers and cartridges constantly. If you’re replacing washers every few months across multiple taps, the pressure is worth measuring before you buy another part. A pressure limiting valve deals with the cause. It also protects your hot water unit and flexible hoses, which is a much bigger saving than one tap.
The wrong part went in. Washers come in different sizes and rubber grades, and hot and cold taps aren’t always identical. A part that nearly fits will seal for a while, then won’t. If you’re buying your own, our guide on where to buy plumbing materials and fittings explains what to check before you hand a box of parts to anyone.
The handle is being cranked shut. If everyone in the house has to gorilla-grip the tap to stop the drip, the seat and washer take a beating every single time. Once the repair is done properly, a light turn should be enough.
Mixers and traditional taps are repairable in different ways
Single-lever mixers have fewer serviceable bits. Basically the cartridge, the O-rings, and the aerator. When a mixer drips, replacing the cartridge fixes it in most cases, provided the right cartridge is available. That’s the catch. Cartridges aren’t universal. Budget imported mixers, or anything from a brand that has since disappeared, can be impossible to match, and that’s the honest reason some mixers get replaced instead of repaired.
Traditional taps with separate hot and cold handles are the opposite. Almost every internal part is available, seats can be re-cut, and even genuinely old tapware in a 1930s St George bathroom can usually be brought back to sealing properly. If you like the look of the originals, that’s worth knowing before anyone talks you into a full changeover.
When a tap honestly can’t be saved
Repair first is the right default, but there’s a point where it stops making sense. Straight answers on when replacement is the better call:
- The tap body is cracked or split. Chrome-plated brass gives up eventually, and no internal part fixes a crack.
- The spindle thread is stripped or the body thread is corroded, so nothing tightens properly anymore.
- It’s a mixer with no cartridge available anywhere.
- The chrome has flaked and the base is weeping through pitted metal rather than a seal.
- You’ve already paid for two or three repairs on the same tap within a couple of years.
We’ll tell you which category yours is in before we start, not halfway through. If it’s repairable, we repair it.
What’s safe to do yourself, and what isn’t
Turning off the small isolating valve under the sink, clearing an aerator, or simply not forcing a stiff handle are all fine and worth doing. Beyond that, tap work in NSW sits closer to licensed plumbing than most people assume, and pulling apart a tap on a pressurised line without knowing how it’s put together is how a small drip turns into a wet floor and a Saturday callout.
If you want the full picture on where the line sits, we’ve written about the plumbing problems you shouldn’t fix yourself in NSW. Short version: if you’re not certain, don’t guess.
Never ignore it either. Sydney Water notes that a tap dripping at one drop a second wastes around 7,000 litres a year, and a dripping hot tap costs you twice because you’re paying to heat water that goes straight down the waste.
Units, strata and older homes: a few local quirks
In apartments around Rockdale, Kogarah and Brighton Le Sands, the isolating valve under the vanity is often the only way to shut off one fixture without involving the whole building. If that valve is seized, a simple tap repair suddenly needs the riser isolated, which means notifying neighbours. Worth mentioning when you book so we can plan for it.
In older houses across the St George area, the common issue is a tap that hasn’t been serviced in twenty years sitting on original pipework. The tap itself is usually fine. It’s the seat, the seal and sometimes the connection behind it that need attention. If the pipework moves or weeps when the tap is worked on, that’s a separate conversation, and one better had before we start than after.
Get it fixed in one visit
The fastest way to a same-visit repair is telling us what you’ve got when you call. A quick photo of the tap helps more than any description. Useful details:
- Mixer with one lever, or separate hot and cold handles
- Kitchen, bathroom, laundry or outside
- Brand name if it’s printed on the tap or you still have the paperwork
- Where the water is coming from, using the list at the top of this page
- Whether it’s been repaired before, and how long the fix lasted
Our vans carry the common washers, O-rings, cartridges and ceramic disc kits, so most jobs are done then and there without a parts run.
Quick guide: repair or replace
| What you’re seeing | Most likely fix |
|---|---|
| Spout drips when tap is off (handled tap) | New washer or jumper valve, seat re-cut |
| Spout drips when tap is off (mixer) | New ceramic cartridge |
| Water at the handle while running | New O-rings |
| Drip returns within weeks | Seat re-cut and pressure check |
| Handle spins, feels loose or grinds | New spindle or cartridge |
| Weeping from the tap body or wall | Needs a proper look, not a parts swap |
Get that drip sorted
You can usually fix a leaking tap without replacing it, and that’s exactly how we approach it: work out which part failed, deal with the cause so it doesn’t come straight back, and keep the tapware you already like. If it truly can’t be saved, we’ll say so and explain why.
Tell us what your tap’s doing and we’ll give you a fixed price before any work starts. Book leaking tap repairs online, or call 02 5950 5382 and one of our licensed plumbers will pick up. If water is running and you can’t stop it, don’t wait around: that’s a job for our burst pipe repairs team, any hour.
While you’re here, if the tap is more noisy than leaky, we’ve covered that separately in how to fix a noisy tap.