Plumbing

[daginge]

Any ABers out there any good with plumbing? My bath hot water tap is almost a trickle! " hours to run a bath, literally! Do I need to somehow turn off the supply from the hot water storage tank or can I dismantle the tap as is; to change the washer and de-scale if necessary?
TIA

[The Builder]

If you have a combi boiler, just turn off the rising main stopcock.
If it's a copper cylinder in the airing cupboard, look for a valve with a big red handwheel, on a thick copper pipe (22mm), and turn it off.
There might be other gatevalves, but we've got to start somewhere.
Then take the handwheel off the tap, remove the shroud, and unscrew the tap valve.
Of course, it might not be that at all lol
Let me know how you get on :o)

[alavahalf]

Turn your hot tap on so you have the trickle ... then As The Builder has already said ... turn your gate valve off. It will be at the side of the hot tank. I'm afraid the vast majority of these gate valves are often seized. I always force them with a large pair of waterpump grips. If it cant be shut off, the only way to stop the hot water is to turn your mains stopcock off, and then just let the hot water run until you have drained the system down.
The top of your bath tap then needs to be removed... I'd grip the spout with a large pair of pump grips, and undo the top of your tap with an adjustable wrench.
From my experience your problem will lie inside your tap, but you wont know until the top of the tap is removed.
They dont get scaled up but the washers sometimes get stuck down onto the face of the tap, or they break up and get stuck in the spout and restrict the flow.
Good luck .. !

[AlBags]

Yes ..
If Conventional Cylinder storage:
There are two choices to turn off hot bathtaps.
1. Gatevalve on the outlet from cylinder in pipework after outlet at top of cylinder (usually 22mm) (IF FITTED)
2. Cold Inlet gatevalve to the Cylinder - From header tank to Cylinder lower (22mm or 28mm)

[malagabob]

If yours is a fairly new property or have had a new suite installed by a plumber who knew the new regulations there should be a "ballofix" valve on the hot supply to the tap,located under the bath behind the side panel.use a flat blade screwdriver to isolate supply.

[daginge]

Thanks All, managed to finally get the gate valve closed and sorted the tap, it was full of greasy muck! Cleaned it all out with the infamous WD40, greased the works and back together in minutes!, bath now fills in 5 minutes instead of not at all, thanks again!

[alavahalf]

You may have stretched it out for a month ... but glad to hear you were successful.
More often than not when you answer a question on AB you never hear back from the poster . So you often wonder if your advice was of any use in the first place .....
Nice to get some feedback ..!