Tap Leaking From the Handle

Why water comes out of the handle

Inside every tap there is a valve: a spindle that you turn with the handle, and a seal at the bottom that opens and closes the waterway. When the tap is open, the water is under mains or tank pressure right up inside the headgear. The only things stopping it escaping up the spindle and out under the handle are one or two small seals around that spindle.

When those wear, you see a trickle or a bead of water appear round the handle, the top shroud or the base of the headgear, but only while the tap is running. With the tap off, the main valve seal holds the water back and the handle stays dry. That is how you tell a handle leak from a drip at the spout, which happens with the tap off and is covered in how to stop a tap leaking.

• Leaks only when on, from round the spindle: gland packing or spindle O-ring.
• Leaks when on, from the joint where the headgear screws into the tap body: headgear body washer, or a headgear that has worked loose.
• Leaks from under the handle of a quarter-turn tap: O-ring on the ceramic cartridge.
• Drips from the spout when off: the main washer or cartridge, not the handle seals.
• Water from the small valve on the pipe below the tap: the isolation valve, not the tap. See an isolation valve leaking.

Older taps with a gland nut: try this first

Traditional pillar taps, bath taps and outside taps often have a gland nut: a small nut on the spindle just under the handle or shroud, above the big headgear hexagon. It squeezes a packing of fibre, graphite string or a rubber ring around the spindle. As that packing wears or dries out, the tap starts to weep round the spindle and often becomes loose or too easy to turn.

Take off the handle or lift the shroud to expose the gland nut. With the tap turned on a little, tighten the gland nut about a quarter to half a turn clockwise with a small spanner, and watch. Often that alone stops the leak. The handle should then feel slightly firmer to turn. If it becomes stiff, you have gone too far; back it off a little.

If the nut is already tight, the packing needs renewing. Turn the water off, undo the gland nut, pick out the old packing, and wind new gland packing string or a few turns of PTFE tape round the spindle before refitting the nut. That is a sensible fix for a tap that is otherwise sound.

Only ever turn a gland nut in small steps. It is a soft brass nut on a thin thread, and forcing it strips the thread or snaps the spindle, which turns a free fix into a new tap.

Taps with O-rings on the spindle

Many compression taps from the last few decades have no gland nut. Instead the spindle runs in a brass sleeve with one or two rubber O-rings sealing it. These are often non-rising spindle headgears, where the handle stays at the same height as you turn it.

Turn off the water at the isolation valve or the stopcock and open the tap to drain it. Remove the handle and undo the headgear with a spanner, holding the tap body with your other hand so the tap does not twist in the basin. On the bench, the spindle is usually held in by a circlip at the top. Remove it with a small screwdriver or circlip pliers, push the spindle out, and you will see the O-rings in grooves.

Cut off the old rings and fit new ones of the same size, with a thin coat of silicone tap grease. Plumbers' merchants and hardware shops sell O-ring assortments, and headgear repair kits for common taps include them with a new washer. While the headgear is out, replace the flow washer at the bottom too; it costs pennies and saves opening the tap again.

Quarter-turn and lever taps

Ceramic disc cartridges do not have gland packing. Each cartridge has an O-ring round its outside that seals it into the tap body, and sometimes one round the spindle. When those harden or get nicked by scale, water appears under the handle while the tap runs.

With the water off, remove the handle and unscrew the cartridge. Check the O-rings on its body. If they are flattened, split or hard, you can sometimes replace just the ring, but on many cartridges the internal spindle seal cannot be reached, and a new cartridge is the proper repair. Match it by spline count, length and turning direction, or by the tap's make and model. On a single-lever mixer, a leak under the lever is the same fault in a larger cartridge; mixer tap leaking: cartridge or O-ring takes you through it.

The headgear body washer

Sometimes the water is not coming from the spindle at all but from the join between the headgear hexagon and the tap body. Between the two there is a fibre or rubber washer, and when the headgear has been removed and refitted a few times, or has simply worked loose, that washer stops sealing.

First check the headgear is tight. Hold the tap body, and nip the headgear up a little with a spanner. If it still weeps, isolate, remove the headgear and fit a new body washer. Take the headgear with you to match the size, as they vary between makers and between bath and basin taps.

When to stop, and what a repair usually costs

Call someone if the headgear will not undo without the tap body turning in the basin, if the spindle or gland nut is corroded solid, if you cannot turn the water off to the tap, or if the leak runs down inside a vanity unit, bath panel or wall. A slow weep that runs down behind a bath panel can rot the floor for months before it shows.

As a typical market guide, O-rings and gland packing cost a few pounds, a headgear repair kit roughly £5 to £15, and a replacement ceramic cartridge roughly £5 to £60 depending on the make.

A leaking tap repair visit with us is a £60 call-out at any hour. The repair price is agreed with you on site before any work starts. The engineer isolates the tap, replaces the spindle seals, cartridge or washer, and runs it on and off to confirm the handle is dry.