Removing Old Silicone Sealer

You can buy silicone sealant digester from B&Q etc. You need to remove as much as possible mechanically first, and then this stuff will soften and loosen the rest.

You must then clean very carefully and with meths before replacing it.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

Thanks. Unfortunately the bit behind the taps needs doing which is going to be difficult to shift manually but I'll give this stuff ago.

It might be worth removing the taps. Most taps come off pretty easily, and the better access will allow you to do a much better job of applying the new silicone.

Consider sacrificing some of your cutlery, or other tools, to make appropriately shaped scrapers.

The plumber put gate valves on the hot and cold pipes to the taps when the bath was put in so this should be relatively straight forward, if the unions on the taps aren't too tight.

Kevin

If he used those gate valves with the round-spokey tops, then beware as quite often the tops shear off when you try to use the valve after a period of time. The full bore lever valves are much better I notice the posh bathroom showroom near here uses these exclusively on all its installs.