Old side mounted bath taps.

[Tim W]

I want to keep an old iron bath and have it resurfaced. the cold tap has been leaking for years and they aren't very pretty so I was going to replace the taps. A quick look around and I can find no bath taps available at all which are fitted onto the vertical inside face of the bath (One hot, one cold, no shower). So questions as follows:

Anyone know who might supply a tap for mounting on the vertical inside of a bath?

Would it be possible to adapt a tap for wall mounting to the bath side? I really just need a pair of taps with back nuts after all.

If I need to remove, restore and reuse the old taps how do I go about descaling/ reseating/ repairing them. Is it something I could easily do one dark winters evening at the kitchen table?

Thanks,

Tim w

[Jim K]

like these?

K

[Tim W]

Yes, almost the same. I have a pair of old ones of course.

Tim W

[Jim K]

)Jim K

[Tim W]

That is exactly what I needed. Thanks.

Tim W

[John Donne]

Quite a few places specialise in restoring taps, may be worth more of a google.

[Pete Zahut]

Same ones on Ebay for £83 with free p&p

[Matty F]

Damn, I *only* have those in my plumbing box, - about half a dozen of them. I need one of the other kind for my handbasin. New taps don't match. I saw an ideal one attached to a handbasin in a skip the other day but when I went back later to ask the owner, the skip was gone.

[Dave Liquorice]

Providing the spindle isn't really badly worn and they don't need replating then you should be able to descale and restore easily enough on the kitchen table, if the managment will let you use that!

Descaling is just a case of stripping right down and dunking descaler, if they are really bad around the nozzles some form of mechanical assistance may speed things up but be careful about any plating. Internally there shouldn't be much, if any, scale anyway. You can get a reseating tool for a few quid, make sure you get one with the right sized cutter(s).

The large but fine fibre washer that goes between the tap assembly and body might be tricky to source but you'll be improvising the spindle packing with cotton(*) string and plumbers mait anyway...

(*) I think you use cotton string or is it lots of strands of hemp?