The cold water tap on my bath has stopped working. It was fine, then one evening I turned it on and there was a very small trickle of water, which then stopped. Now there's no water coming out at all. All the other taps in the house are fine.
We just purchased the house and are thus very house-poor, so are hoping we can fix this ourselves. Any hints on what the problem might be, and how difficult it will be to fix? We're far from being experts
- to give you some idea, we've yet to work out how to actually turn the water supply off to do this (think it might be in the loft, will be looking this weekend)!
Have you been in this house more than a few days? If not it sounds like a tank in the roof has emptied and the mains tap allowing it to be filled up is closed.
The most likely place to find that tap is under the sink, or in the cupboards under the stairs. But I'm not totally convinced that the stopvalve is closed, at least one tap in the house, probably the kitchen sink cold tap, should be fed from the rising main. Is/are the toilet cistern(s) filling up after flushing?
Yep, checked those. And everywhere else we could think of, except the attic (because access to the attic-ladder was blocked by boxes of not-yet-unpacked stuff).
Yes, all toilets are working normally, all other taps in house are working normally, shower in ensuite is fine...it's just the one tap that isn't doing anything.
You will also have to drain the tank off first via another tap. If you can't find a means of turning off the incoming supply you will have to get into the loft and tie up the ball valve. Unless you are really lucky and have Supataps (identified where supply pipe enters top of tap and know/outlet are one piece) on which repairs can be made without shutting off the supply.
Oh thank goodness. I was staring at it thinking my knowledge was even poorer than I'd thought LOL
Will hunt down the stopcock (after I've caught up on laundry!) and see what I can do. The plan is not to do anything I'm not 100% certain of until tomorrow afternoon, because at least then if I have to phone a plumber, I can leave the water off until Monday morning and avoid paying weekend rates!
Thanks to all for your help - will let you know how I get on.
Okay, well here's your laugh for this evening :-)
My husband took the top of the tap off and replaced the "springy thing" that apparently popped off it about a week ago. Note: this is the first I've heard about this "springy thing"! - apparently at no point did it occur to him that its absence and the lack of water flowing might be connected!
And whaddya know...we have cold water. Never even got around to checking out the attic...
Well done on the springy thing front. I have no idea what the springy thing is, my taps haven't got them.
Now for safety's sake in future, just make sure you know where the shutoff tap(stopcock) is. When you need it, you'll probably need it RIGHT NOW!!!! There will be children screaming, the lights will be out, and water will be pouring through the light fittings in the ceiling. All right, that is the worst case scenario, but it can happen.
As I said before, it may be under the sink, under the stairs, in the meter cupboard or in a box on the outside wall of your house. Somewhere there is a pipe bringing water from the mains outside into your property. This is called the rising main. Given that the property is fairly young, this will almost certainly be a blue plastic pipe, 1"-1.5" (outside) diameter There will be a brass or plastic tap on it, and then the piping will probably be copper. You need to make sure you can operate this tap. Turn it off all the way, turn it back on all the way, then turn it just a half turn towards off again. This stops it getting jammed against the back stop. Doing this every couple of months means that it is likely to remain usable for when you need it.
And for the same reasons you also need to know how to turn off the electricity and the gas.
LOL - my taps do, and I still don't know what it is!
BTDT - we had a major flood in a house we had just moved into a few years ago. Middle of night, baby screaming, and yes - water pouring through ceiling (into the basement where all our moving boxes were stored...) Not Fun. The insurance claim - for construction work and replacement of stuff - ran into several tens of thousands.
Thanks for all of this; I'm sure it will make it much easier to identify! :-)
No gas, and we've already figured out the electricity.
Thanks for all the help - this is a great group, and I will no doubt return with more (possibly dumb) questions shortly :-)
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