Leaky plumbing under the kitchen sink.

Nov 26, 2012 8 Replies

On my kitchen sink I replaced the original old style twist taps with 1/4 turn lever taps, cheap Homebase ones. However now when I open the cold lever tap quickly a plumbing fixture under the sink gives a brief squirt of water, into my under sink cupboard.



This leaking fixture is situated in the pipe just after the cut off tap where mains water enters the house, but before everything else apart from the pipe to the garden hose tap. My guess is that the leaky device is some type of pressure reducing valve and that opening the tap quickly causes some kind of pressure shock. It has Reliance Water Controls written on it.



As knowledgeable members might have guessed I'm starting from a position of considerable ignorance and was wondering if the solution is just to replace the lever tap with a screw tap or if I need to replace the leaky "pressure reducing valve". Even telling me the correct terms to google to understand the problem would be a great help.


A photograph might help :-)

And exactly where on the device the leak is occuring. I suspect it is a pressure reducing valve but it shouldn't leak...

I know nothing about them but does it look like one of these?

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I would want to sort the leak, rather than change the tap.

Andy C

The device is probably circa 1988 and isn't as pretty as the pictures on the web site.

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doesn't have any gauges visible but is a similar shape.

However there is a smallish ~1mm diameter hole in the center of the top end of the short tube extending perpendicular to the main pipe. The water shoots out this hole like a weak water pistol.

I'll try to work out how to publish a photo tomorrow.

Thanks.

A little bit similar but a different era, i.e. 30 years old.

This is just a stop gap solution as I intend to redo the entire kitchen in the immediate future.

Thanks

Ah, you didn't say that in the OP. In that case it may well be time expired, replace it.

Yep here are photo's

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you will see time expired is a distinct possibility. Although not

100% sure what to replace it with?

The two white pipes to the left are to a water softener which I don't use, maybe that is why they needed a pressure reducing valve. If this is in fact a pressure reducing valve.

"Wire drawing" - interesting. I never knew the term for that. Every day's a skule dae.

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