Ceramic Bathroom Tap Inserts (God I Hate Plumbing)

Sat drinking tea with Mrs PD this morning. Suddenly for no reason, water starts running upstairs.

Run up to have a look, bath cold tap running at full pelt and won't turn off.  Run down and turn off stop cock.

Okay, let's unscrew the ceramic cartridge.  Adjustable spanner first, no can't shift it.  Stilsons, no can't get in to get a grip.  Eventually find a deep socket that will fit, can't shift it, even with the longest bar I have (the torque wrench) then the socket jumps and takes the corners off the brass nut.

Nothing else for it but remove the complete bath mixer tap.

The bloody hot tap half turn ball isolator does not turn full off. So I'm now working with the now disconnected hot pipe dripping into a tray (imagine if our MCB's didn't turn completely off, yeah you just get a little tingle)

So the only way to undo the insert is to take the complete tap down to the garage, hold the insert in the vice, done up as tight as possible, and whack the body of the mixer tap with a rubber mallet. God it was in there tight.

So the "fault"

At the bottom if the cartridge is a soft rubber washer that seals against (what would be if it were a conventional tap) the valve seat.  It's retained by a cheap and nasty plastic moulding.  What has happened is the thin plastic outer ring has broken, so the washer is no longer "contained" and the water pressure has pushed it outwards and it has unseated.

Now this happened to the other one a couple of years ago, That one I took to a plumber merchant to try and buy a replacement. they tried all they had, but they come in different lengths and with different treads.  FFS are there no standards for these things?

The lat one i fixed bodged br replacing the soft rubber washer with a much stiffer more substantial alternative that didn't need a retaining ring to contain it. But that was a LOT of fiddling, basically taking a standard tap washer and opening up the inside bore with a scalpel.

I fully expect if I go to the trouble of taking this one to a plumbers merchant I will find they don't have the right one.

I could do the same bodge again.

Alternatively, if I can find my reel of copper tape, I sould wrap a couple of turns of that round it, and solder the end back so it can't unwrap, and try that.

Did I mention, God I hate modern carp plumbing fittings?

Less hassle to just buy a new one. That's what I did in our kitchen in a similar situation.

The best plumbing investment is a couple of dis-mountable 15mm push fit stop ends. Great in such circumstances.

Can't fit a stop end to a copper pipe soldered to a 22mm tap connector.

Best thing for that is fit an old tap.  Yep, I'm a bloody idiot, yet another thing I threw out, my collection of old taps. I will never need them will I?  headbang

ProDave. Had the same thing last month. Took a chance on a ceramic module from plumb city. Fit perfect. Lucky me. It think its plumb co that do a rejuvenating kit. New module and tap heads. The bit that goes in the tap is always same. It the bit sticking out that varies.

Yes perhaps what was wrong last time I tried (my memory is poor) was the wrong number of splines on the actuator shaft.

ProDave said:

Can't fit a stop end to a copper pipe soldered to a 22mm tap connector.

Best thing for that is fit an old tap.  Yep, I'm a bloody idiot, yet another thing I threw out, my collection of old taps. I will never need them will I?  headbang

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i hope you scrapped them