If you have some basic plumbing skills, you may have had a go at fixing your leaking tap. Simple problems like worn-out washers are often easy to repair. If you've done this kind of job before, you expect everything to be fine once you put the tap together again and turn the water back on.

While you might assume that your tap will stop leaking now you've fixed it, this hasn't worked. It's still leaking as much as it did before. What should you do next?

Have Another Try

Turn off your water and dismantle your tap again. Check that the repair you made is OK. For example, if you put in a new washer, check that it's in the right place and is situated correctly.

If the washer looks fine, then you may have missed another problem in the tap that is causing the leak. This washer might have needed to be replaced, but something else in the tap may have gone wrong as well.

Check other washers and the O-ring. If they look worn down or have started to split, then replace them as well. If everything looks fine now, put the tap together again and turn your water on. Hopefully, the leak will stop. If it doesn't, then you may have reached the end of your DIY plumbing skill set.

Call a Plumber

While taps do leak because their parts are old, worn or damaged, sometimes leaks have a different cause. For example, if you have a problem in a pipe, like a blockage or water pressure that is out of kilter, then your leak might not be down to faulty parts in the tap at all.

Sometimes, water backs up in pipes when it can't flow properly. If water gets back up into a tap and there is enough of it, it may leak out of the tap, even though the tap itself doesn't have a problem.

If you don't have plumbing training, then you can't diagnose this problem and fix it yourself. It's more complicated than a broken tap washer.

To get things sorted, call a plumber from a domestic plumbing service out to fix the tap. They will double check that the tap is fine. If it is, then they'll dig a little deeper to find the source of the leak. If this is a pipe problem, then the pipe may need to be cleaned out or your water pressure may need to be fixed.