Tap repair and replacement in London
A tap that drips all night. A kitchen mixer that has gone so stiff you need two hands to turn it. A puddle that keeps appearing round the base of a basin tap and never quite explains itself. Most of these come down to one small part inside the tap rather than the tap itself, which makes them a short visit — and where a tap really has come to the end of its life, we say so and put the two prices side by side.
- Gas Safe registered and fully insured
- DBS-checked engineers
- Emergency callout available 24/7
- Price agreed before work starts
- Workmanship guaranteed
Monday – Sunday, 7:00 AM – 10:00 PM · Out-of-hours emergency? Call 020 3576 5825
Get a price for tap repair and replacement
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What this includes
- Dripping kitchen, basin and bath taps
- Washers, O-rings and ceramic cartridges replaced
- Stiff, squeaking and seized handles
- Leaks from the base of a tap or underneath it
- Mixer, monobloc and pillar taps fitted
- Poor flow from one tap when the rest are fine
Worth knowing first
A little of this might mean you do not need to call us at all — we would still rather you knew it.
Most drips are one small part
On an older tap with a handle you turn several times, the drip is nearly always a perished rubber washer. On a modern lever or quarter-turn mixer it is a ceramic cartridge instead. If the water is escaping where the spout swivels rather than out of the end, that is an O-ring. All three are inexpensive parts and none of them means the tap is finished.
Hard water is why cartridges give up here
London water is hard, and the scale it leaves behind ends up on exactly the surfaces a tap relies on to seal. It furs up cartridges, roughens seats and blocks the little aerator screwed into the end of the spout. That is why a tap in a London kitchen tends to stiffen up or start dripping again sooner than the same tap would somewhere soft — and why a scaled aerator is worth ruling out before anyone assumes the tap is at fault.
When replacing beats repairing
Sometimes the fault is in the body of the tap: the seat it closes against is worn away, the threads have corroded, or nobody has made parts for that model in twenty years. Ninja Plumbers will tell you when that is the case, price the repair and the replacement against each other, and let you pick. What we will not do is fit a washer we already know will be dripping again by spring.
Leaking at the base is a different fault
Water round the bottom of a tap has not come from the spout. It is usually the seal between the tap and the worktop or basin, or the flexible tails and isolation valves underneath. Open the cupboard and feel the pipework down there — if it is wet, the problem is below the sink, not above it.
What affects the price
Tap work is usually one of our quicker visits. The price depends on whether a small part inside the tap will do, and on what kind of tap is going in if it will not.
A part, or the whole tap
A washer, an O-ring or a cartridge is a small repair. A new tap costs more in parts and takes longer to fit, but where the body is worn or corroded it is the repair that actually lasts.
The type of tap going in
A like-for-like mixer is straightforward. Swapping two pillar taps for a single mixer leaves a spare hole to blank off, and pull-out spray taps, filter taps and boiling-water taps need more room and more connections underneath.
Kitchen, basin or bath
Kitchen and basin taps are usually reachable from the cupboard or under the basin. Bath tap connections often sit behind a bath panel that has to come off, and wall-mounted taps are plumbed inside the wall, which makes both slower to change.
Several taps at once
If two or three taps are dripping, fixing them on the same visit costs less than separate trips. New customers also get £25 off their first call-out with us, which cannot be used alongside any other offer.
The price is agreed before any work starts. We take card and cash.
Common questions
Can a dripping tap be repaired, or does it need replacing?
Usually repaired. A washer, an O-ring or a ceramic cartridge fixes the large majority of drips. Replacement comes into it when the tap body itself is worn or corroded, and in that case you get both prices before anything is decided.
Can you fit a tap I have bought myself?
Yes. It helps to check before buying that it matches the holes you have — a monobloc mixer needs one hole, separate pillar taps need two — and that there is room behind the sink for the handles to turn.
How long does a tap replacement take?
A straightforward swap is normally a single visit. What slows it down is what is under the sink rather than the tap: a seized backnut, a corroded isolation valve or a cramped cupboard can all add time, and if that is what we find we tell you before carrying on.
My tap started dripping again a few months after it was fixed. Why?
Either the wrong part went in, or scale has built up again on a seat that was already worn. Hard water shortens the life of a repair on a tired tap, which is one of the honest arguments for replacing rather than repairing an old one.
Is a dripping tap worth fixing straight away?
Yes, for a few reasons. A steady drip wastes a surprising amount of water, which shows on a metered bill, and a dripping hot tap is also wasting the energy used to heat it. In London’s hard water a drip leaves scale stains in the basin or sink that are hard to shift. And a drip left for months can wear the tap’s seat, turning a small washer job into a new tap.
Can you fit a boiling water tap?
Yes, provided the kitchen can take one. Most need a tank or boiler unit in the cupboard under the sink, a plug socket inside that cupboard, which our electricians can fit if there is not one already, and a cold supply to connect to. Some include a filter cartridge that needs changing periodically, which matters more in hard-water London. Check the space under your sink and the tap-hole size before buying.
More plumbing work we take on
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Emergency Plumbing
Burst pipes, major leaks and no water. We take calls around the clock and get an engineer moving.
More on Emergency Plumbing -
General Plumbing
Taps, toilets, radiators and pipework. The jobs that never quite get done.
More on General Plumbing -
Leaking Ceiling
Water dripping or pouring through a ceiling. What to do first, then the source found and stopped — in your home or the flat above.
More on Leaking Ceiling -
Leak Repair
Leaks you can see — dripping joints, weeping valves, perished hoses, overflows running outside — isolated, repaired and checked properly afterwards.
More on Leak Repair -
Leak Detection
Hidden leaks traced with acoustic and thermal equipment, before floors come up.
More on Leak Detection -
Toilet Repair
Toilets that will not flush, keep running, fill slowly or leak onto the floor. Usually one worn part, replaced without needing a new toilet.
More on Toilet Repair -
Pipe Repair
Burst, split, frozen and corroded pipework repaired — or replaced where patching it would be pointless.
More on Pipe Repair -
Low Water Pressure
Weak taps and showers diagnosed by testing, not by swapping parts and hoping.
More on Low Water Pressure -
Lead Pipe Replacement
Old lead supply pipes replaced with new, from the boundary into the house.
More on Lead Pipe Replacement -
Commercial Plumbing
Offices, restaurants, retail and blocks of flats, worked around your opening hours.
More on Commercial Plumbing -
Gas Safety Certificates
Landlord gas safety certificates issued by a Gas Safe registered engineer, with the paperwork sent the same day.
More on Gas Safety Certificates
Need tap repair and replacement in London?
Describe the problem and give us your area, and we’ll tell you the price before anyone starts work.