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Our outdoor tap has sprung a leak. Not the outdoor bit but the indoor bit near where it is attached to the original pipework.
It's a simple leak, in that there appears to have been a tiny screw in the pipe which has come out. The other half (who spotted the leak) swears it was a tiny screw, can describe it, and even tell me where it is (though pretty much un-retrievable), yet has no idea how it came out 😕 I wonder...
Anyway. It's a tiny little hole in a copper pipe. Water comes out with very little pressure considering. It just...leaks. What can I plug it up with?
Perhaps a tiny little screw?
Sounds like a popular bodgeit and scarper repair to me.
Proper job is a new bit of pipe. Or at least cut the pipe and put a socket joint where the hole was.
Temporary measure would be a bit of inner tube glued over the hole and a jubilee clip over the top of that.
Might last a few days, could last for years.
telescopic magnet probe to retrieve it and screw back in - or a quick homer for a friendly local plumber to cut out and rejoin pipe
Fix the bleedin thing properly man. 🙂
If it's a straight run they do a repair fitting that's basically a straight coupler but has no tube stops, so it just bridges the bit you chop out.
I don't believe that in this day and age there's not something to fix it without taking it apart.
Surely, with rows and rows of various chemicals in B&Q one of them will do the job perfectly.
A plumber tried to fix a leak here with some rubber tape stuff. It didn't work for me, but a) it's a high pressure system and b) I don't think he used it properly.
Assuming you can isolate the supply and you can cut out around 4" of pipe then this is possibly the easiest (though not necessarily the cheapest) diy repair - £10 at screwfix:
[img][url= http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8091/8420840615_826a131c8b.jp g" target="_blank">
[url= http://www.flickr.com/photos/8405882@N04/8420840615/ ]slip coupler[/url] by [url= http://www.flickr.com/people/8405882@N04/ ]john_onone[/url], on Flickr[/img]
Just had a look to confirm. It's the actual tap. The one that is screwed into the original copper piping.
It was only a cheap kit and it's one of those ones that you simply screw in and it makes its own hole.
So it's either fix the leak or change the tap. If I bought another of the same taps I don't know if it would seal well, since it's already been done once. Or maybe I'd be better getting a tap in like a T-piece, and just cutting out the section where this one has been fitted??
Just had a look to confirm. It's the actual tap. The one that is [b]screwed into the original copper piping.[/b]
There's your problem right there.
Those kits are complete rubbish. I've taken loads of them out and replaced with proper fittings that don't leak.
Get a plumber to replace it properly, with proper pipe fittings and it won't leak again.
Or do it yourself if you know how.
But don't try and replace it with another of those kits, it just isn't worth it.
The actual fitting has been fine thus far actually. Which surprised me to be honest. The tap itself has a hole in it.
If I can fit something better, cheaply and easily. Then cool. But if I can plug it, I'm happy to leave that job for another day.
At the moment it's just a case of accepting some amount of collateral damage each time I wash my bike.
with modern push fit plumbing connections it's really not a big job assuming you can find the stop cock and drain the system a bit before you start.