Its a small terraced house with the old system of supplying the cold water to the upstairs bath, toilet and hand basin from a water tank in the loft.
The cold water tap in the basin in the bathroom sometimes does not supply any water when first turned on.
When no cold water comes out, then going and opening the cold water Bath Tap the bath tap works fine. A short while after that the cold water basin tap then supplies water.
Any ideas what is going on here ?
air lock?
Is it coming on when you close the bath tap again or perhaps just after a period of time, regardless of the bath tap? Could it be the low pressure from the tank and a sticking tap washer, with the washer gradually unsticking anyway, or more suddenly when there bath tap is closed and the pressure momentarily rises, due to water's existing momentum?
Thanks. One thing i forgot to mention is that the cold water comes out of a mixer tap which it shares with the hot water tap in the basin.
I'd start by changing the washer.
Then, if that's unsuccessful, fit something like this:
Sounds like something has got into the offtake for the line to the misbehaving tap and it takes water out of the other taps to shift it a bit and see it flow again.
Have a look to see where the pipe that feeds the misbehaving tap come trom, it may even have its own feed from the water tank or a header etc.
Yes.
Can't see that unsticking a sticking tap washer.
Possibly taps with ?floating? washers - they are fixed to a plunger which fits into a hole in the tap head. When you open the tap, they are lifted open, rather than pulled open.
They are fine on mains pressure systems. But can stick on low pressure ones. You you can probably just fit new heads. Just find some the right size. A decent plumber?s merchant should have them.
I'd be inclined to go and count the number of dead starlings there are lurking in the bottom of the cold water tank.
Chances are the tap washer has perished.
Might be an airlock although usually they are caused by running the bath taps at full bore. My house is vulnerable to that mode of failure.
see yall soon
Blast from the past: If its of any use, most water tanks are covered, so I'd doubt many starlings are in it. In my case a clip that held the cold water running along the loft had broken and the pipe drooped causing a kind of sloshing aire lock effect. Fixing that and blowing mains water from a hosepipe from the mains back up into the tank fixed it and no further issues. Brian
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