Dripping tap: washer, cartridge, or time for a new tap?

Here is the short answer. If your dripping tap is the old-style type with a head you turn two or three full rotations to open, it needs a rubber washer that costs about RM 2. If it is a modern single-lever mixer, it needs a ceramic cartridge, usually RM 20–80 depending on the brand. And if the tap body is corroded, pitted or the head is seized solid, replacing the whole tap is honestly cheaper than fighting it — basic taps start around RM 30–80 at any hardware shop in the Serdang area.

First: which type of tap do you have?

• Compression tap — separate hot and cold heads (or a single garden-style head) that turn several rotations. Inside is a headwork with a rubber washer at the bottom. The washer hardens and cracks after years of squeezing shut, and the tap starts to drip no matter how hard you close it. This is the type in most older terrace houses around Serdang and Seri Kembangan.
• Single-lever mixer — one lever that lifts and swings for temperature. Inside is a ceramic disc cartridge. When it drips, or the lever goes loose and floppy, the cartridge is worn. There is no washer to change; the cartridge swaps out as one unit.

Before anything else: shut off the water and test it actually shuts

Find your stopcock — usually near the meter at the gate, sometimes under the sink or at an inside wall valve. Here is something we see on almost every plumbing call: owners who have lived in a house for twenty years and never once turned their stopcock. A valve that has not moved in two decades is often seized, and the time to discover that is now, calmly, not with the tap in pieces and water spraying. Close it, open the lowest tap in the house and wait for the flow to die completely before you start.

The RM 2 washer swap (compression taps)

1. Close the tap fully, then take off the head cover and unscrew the headwork with a spanner, holding the tap body steady with your other hand.
2. At the bottom of the headwork sits a small rubber washer on a nut or push-fit stud. Pry the old one off — it will likely be hard and cracked — and press the new one on.
3. Refit the headwork snugly, restore the water, and close the tap gently. A new washer seals with light pressure; crushing it shut just kills it faster.

One honest warning from the trade: on cheap zinc-alloy taps, the headwork often seizes into the body. If it refuses to budge with reasonable force, stop. We have been called out to plenty of jobs where someone leaned on a spanner and the whole tap snapped off at the body — and if the stub it leaves behind is inside a tiled wall, a RM 2 repair has just become a hacking job. A tap that is seized solid has already told you its answer: replace it.

Mixer taps: match the cartridge, don’t guess

Ceramic cartridges are not one-size-fits-all. They come in different diameters (commonly 25, 35 and 40 mm), different stem heights, and some brands use their own fittings entirely. The only reliable method is to pull the old cartridge out first — lever handle off, retaining nut off, cartridge out — and bring it to the shop to match physically. Buying by eye from a photo is how people end up with a drawer of almost-right cartridges. If your mixer was a RM 40 no-brand unit, note that a replacement cartridge can cost nearly as much as a new tap; spend the money on the new tap.

What each fix costs

Three dripping taps? Make it one visit

A single dripping tap wastes surprisingly little money — but houses rarely have just one. The kitchen tap drips, the garden tap weeps, a toilet tap head is stiff. If you are going to call someone, walk the whole house first and list every tap problem, because a plumbing visit in the RM 100–500 range costs roughly the same whether we fix one tap or five. We do small plumbing and handyman rounds like this across Serdang, Seri Kembangan, Balakong, Kajang, Bangi and Puchong. But if it is one healthy compression tap with a tired washer? That one is genuinely a do-it-yourself job — keep your RM 100.