12 Jun 2026
A dripping tap is easy to ignore. It is quiet, it is small, and the bathroom door closes on it. But drop by drop it adds up, on your water bill, on your fittings and sometimes on the cabinet underneath.
What a drip really costs
A tap dripping once per second wastes roughly 30 litres a day. Over a year that is more than 10,000 litres of water you paid for and never used. If the drip is on the hot side, you are also paying to heat water that goes straight down the drain. And a slow drip that tracks along the underside of the spout can stain the basin and swell the vanity cabinet over time.
Why taps drip
- Worn washers or O-rings inside older compression taps, the most common cause
- A scratched or scaled ceramic cartridge in newer mixer taps
- High water pressure hammering the internals, which shortens the life of any tap
- Corrosion on the valve seat, so the tap never quite closes even when tightened hard
Tightening the handle harder is the worst response. It crushes the washer further and turns a cheap fix into a replacement.
Repair or replace?
A quality mixer tap that drips usually just needs a new cartridge, a quick job once the right part is matched. A basic tap that is more than eight to ten years old is often cheaper to replace outright than to keep re-washering, especially if the body or finish is already pitted.
Stop the drip at the source
If a brand-new washer or cartridge starts leaking again within months, ask your plumber to check the incoming pressure. Persistent pressure above the comfortable range wears out every tap, flexible hose and toilet valve in the home, and a small adjustment protects all of them at once.
A drip is the cheapest plumbing problem you will ever fix. Left alone, it quietly becomes one of the more annoying ones.