Last weekend our kitchen tap bust. It's one of those Reich Twist mixers, and the spigot sheared where it goes into the spout elbow.
This is the whole thing in bits:
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And this is where it broke:
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This isn't a repair job, either in the field or otherwise - the spigot is part of the internal tap body, so the only option is a whole new sixty quid's worth of tap. Having peered intently at where the break occurred, it looks rather as if the joint was on the point of failing for quite a while since the freshly-sheared section is quite small. This might have been the source of a slight weep onto the worktop whenever the tap was in use, but since there was no evidence of a leak when the tap was off, I wasn't too bothered. And besides, it would have been all but impossible to find the source without attempting to remove the elbow, which would definitely have broken it off anyway.
It goes to show that these things aren't really very robust (since they have to be light), and won't take anything like the same kind of abuse that domestic taps have to cope with.
So it might pay to treat them gingerly, if you aren't already.
Sixty quid is a lot of money.
There is a small silver lining in the expensive cloud, though. I have salvaged the microswitch, just in case...
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