Is a Dripping Tap Really Wasting Water?

A dripping tap looks trivial. One drop at a time, a saucer of water a day, surely not worth a plumber. The maths says otherwise. A steady drip of around one drop per second wastes tens of litres a day. Left for a year, that single tap can quietly send thousands of litres down the drain, which is comparable to a couple of weeks of a typical household’s entire water use, wasted on nothing.

A faster drip, or the thin continuous dribble that a badly worn tap eventually develops, wastes far more. And if it is the hot tap dripping, you are also paying to heat every one of those litres before losing them, so the waste shows up on your energy bill as well as your water bill.

We deliberately are not quoting dollar figures here, because they depend on your tariff, your hot water system and how bad the drip is. The honest framing is simpler: a dripping tap wastes real water every single day, it never improves on its own, and the fix is one of the smallest jobs in plumbing.

A traditional tap seals by pressing a rubber washer, sitting in a small brass fitting called a jumper valve, down onto a machined brass seat inside the tap body. Every time the tap opens and closes, that washer compresses against the seat. Over years the rubber hardens, cracks or wears a groove, and the seal stops being watertight. That is the classic drip, and a new washer usually fixes it.

But the washer is only half the seal. The brass seat underneath also wears, especially when a hardened washer has been grinding against it, or when someone has been cranking the tap harder and harder to stop the drip. A pitted seat will chew through new washers in weeks. The proper repair is to re-cut the seat with a reseating tool so the new washer lands on a smooth surface. Skipping this step is why some taps seem to need a new washer every few months.

Modern mixer taps drip for a different reason. They use a ceramic disc cartridge instead of a washer, and when the cartridge wears or a piece of grit scores the discs, the whole cartridge needs replacing. Matching the right cartridge to the brand and model matters, which is why we carry the common ones on the van.

Plenty of the homes we work on in Brighton, Hampton and Elwood still have their original tapware, some of it dating back to when the house was built. Edwardian and Californian bungalow bathrooms often have imperial-sized tap spindles and seats that do not match modern metric parts off the shelf. The right washers and jumper valves exist, but they are not what a hardware store hands you by default, and forcing a metric part into an imperial body is a common cause of the drip that comes back a fortnight later.

Old brass bodies also become brittle. A spindle that has seized with age can shear off if it is forced, turning a five-minute washer change into a tap body replacement. If your taps are decades old, stiff to turn, or the drip has resisted a washer change already, that is worth mentioning when you book, so we arrive with the right parts.

In Victoria, most plumbing work legally requires a licensed plumber. Replacing a tap washer is one of the few genuine exceptions: it is generally accepted as basic maintenance a homeowner can do, along with jobs like changing a showerhead. If you are confident, turn the water off at the meter, open the tap to drain pressure, and take the old washer with you when buying a replacement so the size matches.

Where we would tell you to stop is anything beyond the washer. Re-cutting a worn seat, replacing a mixer cartridge under pressure, changing a tap body, or any work that involves cutting or joining pipework must be done by a licensed plumber, and doing it yourself can void insurance and create bigger leaks than the one you started with.

Our honest rule of thumb: one modern tap, easy access, first drip, have a go if you like. Multiple dripping taps, old or imperial fittings, a drip that came back after a new washer, or a mixer, book a plumber. We fix taps in one visit where possible because the common washers, cartridges and reseating tools stay on the van.