Cold water tap in one upstairs bathroom not working

huber

Any solutions to what might be wrong with cold tap in one upstairs bathroom. All other taps working fine but this cold tap went from a dribble over a few days to not working at all.

antiskeptic

huber wrote: »

Any solutions to what might be wrong with cold tap in one upstairs bathroom. All other taps working fine but this cold tap went from a dribble over a few days to not working at all.

Fair chance it's an air lock. I'll assume it's a cold-only tap rather than a monobloc (a tap with cold and hot coming through the same nozzle - which are usually easier to unairlock)

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If you're lucky you'll have a flexible shower hose that can reach this tap. In which case, unscrew the shower head from the hose & press the open end of the hose into the tap outlet, with the cold tap in open position. Wrap a rag around the junction of hose and tap outlet to stop water spraying around and open the shower tap to get water out of the hose and up the tap line.

Let things run for a minute or so - this will part fill the tap line

Pull the shower hose off the cold tap and the cold tap will start running out the water you've filled it with. Through siphon effect, the draining water should pull the airlock through. It has done anytime I've used this technique

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If you don't have a shower hose near, you'll have to get some suitable tubing to connect the sinks hot tap to the cold tap. It doesn't have to be a great fit as the pressure isn't much (I'm assuming a tank feeding things rather than mains fed). Indeed, something that shoves up the tap outlets (like a section cut from your garden hose) will do. Or you might use your showerhose removed from the shower altogether.

Again some rag wrapped around and held tight to makes things somewhat water tight. Open the cold first then the hot and fill for a minute or so then release the hose.



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if it's monobloc, simply press something up against the outlet, open cold first, then hot and leave for a minute before removing the rag from the outlet


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An alternative if that doesn't work is to get into the attic and hold the ballcock in the down position and block the tank overflow and let the tank fill close to the brim. The extra fill might well drive the airlock out

Failing that, running a hose from mains (eg kitchen tap or likely garden tap) up to the cold tap outlet, leaving the cold tap open, will drive the airlock back to the tank altogether.

Failing that it's not an airlock

s7ryf3925pivug

i had this intermittently. it was an airlock. it could be resolved by opening the downstairs tap from the same tank at the same time as the non functioning one