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.
- Fully insured and Gas Safe registered
- Engineers DBS-checked
- 24/7 emergency callouts
- Price agreed before we start
- 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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Included in the job
- 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
Read this before you ring
You may find you can sort some of this yourself, without calling us. We are fine with that, and would 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 changes 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.
We agree the price with you before any work begins, and accept both card and cash.
Questions we often get
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.
Other plumbing jobs we do
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Emergency Plumbing
For burst pipes, serious leaks or a house with no water. The phone is answered at any hour and an engineer is sent out.
Read about Emergency Plumbing -
General Plumbing
Radiators, pipework, taps and toilets: the small jobs that keep getting put off.
Read about 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.
Read about Leaking Ceiling -
Leak Repair
Leaks you can see — dripping joints, weeping valves, perished hoses, overflows running outside — isolated, repaired and checked properly afterwards.
Read about Leak Repair -
Leak Detection
Acoustic and thermal equipment to trace hidden leaks before any floor is lifted.
Read about 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.
Read about Toilet Repair -
Pipe Repair
Burst, split, frozen and corroded pipework repaired — or replaced where patching it would be pointless.
Read about Pipe Repair -
Low Water Pressure
Weak taps and showers diagnosed by testing, not by swapping parts and hoping.
Read about Low Water Pressure -
Lead Pipe Replacement
Old lead supply pipes replaced with new, from the boundary into the house.
Read about Lead Pipe Replacement -
Commercial Plumbing
Plumbing for offices, restaurants, shops and blocks of flats, timed to fit the hours you open.
Read about Commercial Plumbing -
Gas Safety Certificates
Your landlord gas safety certificate, checked and issued by a Gas Safe registered engineer and emailed over the same day.
Read about Gas Safety Certificates -
TMV Servicing & Testing
Thermostatic mixing valves tested, cleaned and reset, with a record for every valve, for schools, nurseries, care and business premises.
Read about TMV Servicing & Testing
Businesses use us for tap repair and replacement too, among them salons and barbers, beauty and tattoo studios, clinics and dental practices, veterinary practices, nail bars, physiotherapy clinics, and plenty of other business types.
Looking for tap repair and replacement in London?
Tell us what is wrong and where you are, and you will have the price before any work begins.