Traditional Manual Shower problem

[Nervy Novice]

Hello,

Can anyone out there give some useful advice to fix this problem?

The hot water tap for my manual shower has slowly stopped rotating fully.

It is now at the point where I get either scalding hot water or freezing cold water.

All other household taps are fine and the boiler was serviced last month.


You will see from the picture below that 'traditional' means OLD, but hopefully this is a simple problem to fix.

Would any of you know if this is simply changing some small part inside the tap casing or does the whole thing need to be replaced?


Any help you can give would stop my daily hot/cold dance


Thanks

 

[JohnD]

They look like traditional taps with a rubber tap-washer. There is a good chance the horseshoe retaining washer (circlip) has come off the spindle, or the jumper has unscrewed.

Look up "how to change a tap washer" and watch one or more of the videos. It will show you how to take the tap apart. You will probably be able to see what has gone wrong when you do.

While you have it apart, remove scale from the internal parts with a bathroom cleaning spray and a green nylon pan scourer, and lubricate the working parts and threads with white silicone grease. Fit new tap washers while you have it apart, it's very easy and cheap. Clean up the outside of the mixer as well, it will look better. Use a nylon washing-up brush for awkward crevices.

Turn off the water before you start, put in the plug and lie an old towel under the mixer, to catch dropped parts and prevent them going down the drain.

p.s.
measure the distance between the centres of the two supply pipes very accurately, if it is a standard size you can easily fit a new mixer, should it become necessary.

 

[it's not that hard]

A pair of tap head revivers/restorers should do the trick,cost about £15 to £20

 

[Newboy]

Or a new washer - 2p

 

[Madrab]

And a bottle of cilly bang limescale remover