Semi-Seized Tap Cartridge

When that happened to mine, I simply bought a generic ceramic cartridge and that worked fine. I think they are fairly well standardised.

I had a tap like that at a previous house and I removed the ceramic cartridge about every six months and cleaned it with Viakal otherwise it dripped.

They vary a bit on length and on the number of teeth on the spline.

You need to compare yours with this sort of thing:

I couldn't find a cartridge at a sensible price for mine. My taps were quite old and had minor other issues. In the end I found a whole Peglar mixer tap on special offer at around half the price I had found for a couple of suitable replacement cartridges.

While there may be some degree of standardisation there are lots of variants. To find a replacement you have to count the number of splines on the top were that tap handle fits and check the overall dimensions.

Example of range of different cartidges

Yes.

Would this even solve the problem? IME, yes.

You can try what I did years ago, and simply work that tap back and forward to break up the limescale a bit

Might be time to replace the sodding lot. Most plumbing seems to go faulty in a hard water area after ten years or so, whereas fitting a softener seems to have a lot of it still working after 30 years.

Retrofitting a softener will *ultimately* dissolve any limescale out as well

Indeed.

I just replaced some traditional taps - not ceramic ones - and the replacements were OEM and cost more than the taps had originally...22 years ago!

Thanks to all respondents.

I'm going to try the "clean it up" route first for two reasons:

No not because I'm tight!

I don't like throwing stuff away. Also, I am struggling a bit with the effort of getting to the underside of a hand basin :(

Phil