If your taps are seizing up, it’s better to use a SILICONE grease, that is WRAS approved, rather than something like Vaseline or WD40. We can supply ‘user quantities’ rather than large tubes.
Whilst toilet cleaner, Viakal, lemon juice and vinegar are said to remove limescale from chrome taps, you’ll probably wreck the plating if you try and if you do, the only fix is to refurbish the tap completely.
The only spray cleaner that we can recommend using is CIF ACTIFIZZ. Please follow the manufacturer’s instructions to the letter and rinse thoroughly with water after use, especially the areas where chemicals may get trapped.
Good old BRASSO is a great brass cleaner, but if you want something less abrasive, try the sister product SILVO, made in wadding form for easy use.
Gold plating is not as tough as chrome, so if limescale has already built up, you can be pretty sure that it has stripped the plating back to brass already.
Gold plating is a 2-layer process of nickel, topped with gold.
High abrasion areas of gold plating will wear through to a dull nickel layer.
If this has happened to your taps, the two answers are to strip and polish the brass to give you a finish that is “polishable”, or for our team to reapply the two layers again in our refurbishment system.
The only cleaning we recommend for gold plating is wiping over the taps with a piece of damp chamois, then drying with a fine cotton duster.
Don’t leave water droplets on the taps as these will leave marks when they dry.
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The over tightening of taps is the biggest cause of damage to washers, seatings and shaft threads.
Try to find the point that the water actually stops and then only tighten, with your index finger and thumb, an eighth of a turn more.
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Old fashioned bath / shower mixers hold a lot of water “in transit”, so when you turn the tap off (as directed above), please allow time (up to 30 seconds in some cases) for the water to escape the channels.
Maybe moving the diverter in between the two modes will help this to happen.
If water is coming up the shaft of the tap and leaking out of the body, then the packing in the head-work has failed and can only really be fixed by refurbishment of the tap.
If the exterior of the tap is still good and the operation is correct in the rest of the tap, just this part can be sent to us for a speedy, reasonably priced restoration.
Antique taps need more care and love than modern throw-away items, but you will be rewarded in the knowledge that you are saving a piece of history AND the environment.
Much better than transporting a piece of disposable brass-ware across the world and killing the planet in the process. How very green of you!
