What a dripping tap actually costs

One drip a second sounds trivial until you count it out. A standard tap drip runs at roughly a fifth of a millilitre per drop. Multiply that by the number of seconds in a year and you land at close to ten thousand litres, from a single fitting, doing nothing but sitting there. It is also the reason you are awake at two in the morning.

On a Gold Coast household water bill, ten thousand extra litres is not a rounding error. Most residential tariffs charge per kilolitre once you clear the included allowance, so a drip that has been running for a year can add a genuine, visible line to the bill, and it rarely announces itself. Nobody notices a tap that drips once a second. Everybody notices the drip that has sped up to twice a second, which is usually the point the washer or the seat has actually failed rather than just aged.

Most dripping taps come down to one of three things: a worn washer, a scored seat, or a tired cartridge. A washer is the cheapest fix there is, a flat disc that presses onto the seat to stop the flow, and it wears from the simple friction of being turned. A scored seat is the metal ring the washer presses against, and once it is pitted, a new washer will drip again within weeks because it no longer seals against a true surface. A cartridge is the modern equivalent in a mixer tap, a sealed unit that either works or does not, and when it fails the fix is a replacement cartridge, not a washer at all.

We will tell you which one you are looking at on the spot, because the fix and the price are different for each, and there is no honest way to quote it over the phone without seeing the tap.

If the tap is old enough that the cartridge or the specific washer size is no longer manufactured, chasing a part that does not exist stops being worth the labour, and we will say so rather than charge you to look for one. At that point the honest answer is a replacement tap, and we will tell you that plainly rather than keep billing you for a part hunt.

The other case where a washer will not hold is a scored seat: replace the washer as many times as you like and it will drip again in days, because the surface it presses against is no longer flat. Reseating the valve, or replacing it, is the actual fix there, and it is a slightly bigger job than a washer swap but still a small one.

If you are not sure whether a drip you cannot see is costing you, turn every tap and appliance in the house off and watch the water meter for ten minutes. If the dial is still turning, something is using water somewhere on your side of the meter, tap, toilet, or a concealed leak. That test costs nothing and takes ten minutes, and it is the same first step we run on every leak detection job.