Alright, pull up a bucket and listen to an old hand. You’re standing there, shiny new brassware in the box, weekend stretching out in front of you, feeling like a real hero of the home. I admire the gumption, I really do. But courage ain't a substitute for smarts. Before you so much as look at a wrench, let's talk about the five fast tracks to a flooded floor and a call to a bloke like me at double-time rates. This is the autopsy of a job before it even dies on your bathroom floor.
1. The "It Fit on the Computer Screen" Folly
Here it is, the granddaddy of all DIY plumbing sins. You've gone and bought a sleek, single-hole mixer for a tub drilled with two holes a mile apart. Or maybe you snagged a tap with modern 15mm flexi-tails, not realizing your pipework is some crusty, imperial-era 22mm beast. Let me tell you now: you can't intimidate copper pipe into fitting.
The Preventative Medicine: Your first trip ain't to the hardware superstore; it’s a fact-finding mission into the dark cavern under your own bath. Get down on your hands and knees with your phone's camera flash and a tape measure. Snap crystal-clear pictures of the existing fittings from every angle. Measure the gap between the hole centres—is it the common 180mm, or some relic from a bygone age? Get the exact diameter of the pipes feeding the current taps. Write it all down. You are on a mission to procure a direct replacement, not to invent a whole new plumbing system. And get this through your head: there’s no such thing as ‘standard’. ‘Standard’ is the most expensive word in this business.
2. The Gorilla Grip Calamity
I’ve seen the carnage. Someone gets a wrench on a brass nut and thinks they’re tightening the lug nuts on a lorry. They heave and they strain, putting their whole back into it, waiting for that final, satisfying groan. What they actually hear is the sickening little grind of the fine brass threads stripping themselves into oblivion. The very things designed to create that watertight seal are now just a spiral of useless, soft metal.
The Preventative Medicine: Learn some respect for the materials. Brass is not steel; it’s glorified butter. Your goal is not to fuse metal with brute force, but to gently persuade it into forming a perfect partnership. Here's the gospel: every nut, every connection, gets hand-tightened first. It should spin on with the ease of a bottle cap. If you feel resistance, it’s crooked. Back it off. Start again. Once it’s snug by hand, then—and only then—you introduce the wrench for a final, delicate quarter-to-half turn. That's all she needs. It's like closing a jam jar, not sealing a nuclear reactor. A gentle nip is all it takes to seat the washer. Anything more, and you’re just booking a bigger, more expensive repair.
3. The Silent Ruin
The leak that bankrupts you isn't the geyser that soaks your socks. It's the assassin. The quiet, methodical drip... drip... drip... that nobody sees. It works its way along a floor joist, patiently turning the ceiling in the room below into a damp, sagging mess. By the time you spot the tea-coloured stain, the rot has already set in.
The Preventative Medicine: Success here is all about two things: clean surfaces and the proper seals. Those rubber or fibre washers that came in the box? They're your frontline soldiers. The spot on the bath where they'll sit needs to be smoother than a baby’s bottom—no old putty, no limescale, not a single speck of grit. Now, for the threaded pipe connections: if your new flexible hoses have rubber seals already built into them, for the love of all that is holy, do not wrap the threads in PTFE tape. That white tape has its place, but this ain't it. The rubber washer is the seal; the tape just gets in the way and can stop it from seating properly. After the job's done, take a rag and dry every single joint until it's bone-dry. Then, tear off a single scrap of tissue and wrap it around each new nut. Walk away for an hour. Come back and inspect it. The slightest hint of moisture on that paper means you have a weep. You deal with it now, not after it's redecorated your living room.
4. The Curse of the Rounded Nut
You’re wedged in a cabinet, with your spine bent into a question mark. You get your trusty adjustable wrench on the old brass nut, give it a heave, and…slip. The wrench jaws slide, chewing off the corners of the soft nut. You try again, and now it’s even more rounded. Well done. You just promoted a simple unscrewing job to an angle-grinder-and-cursing job.
The Preventative Medicine: The right tool is not a friendly suggestion; it's a commandment. An adjustable wrench—that thing's a knuckle-buster and a nut-rounder, and not much else. Chuck it. To get at bath taps, you need a set of long-reach basin spanners or a proper basin wrench. Their whole purpose in life is to reach into those ungodly spaces and lock onto the nut's flat faces with unyielding grip. No slipping, no rounding. Fork out twenty quid on the right tool now, or pay me two hundred later when you need me to come cut the old one off. The choice is yours.
5. The "I Thought It Was Off" Deluge
That sickening moment. You were sure the water was off. You give that last nut a final twist, and what was a dribble becomes a full-bore torrent of cold water blasting you in the face. Panic. You can't wrestle the nut back on against that pressure. In the time it takes to run downstairs, your bathroom is becoming an indoor swimming pool.
The Preventative Medicine: Adopt this non-negotiable ritual and never deviate. First, find your main stopcock for the house and crank it clockwise until it's fully closed. Second, march back upstairs and open both the hot and cold bath taps all the way. Let them gush, then sputter, then stop completely. This empties the pipes and—more importantly—proves your stopcock is actually doing its job. If water is still coming out after a couple of minutes, your stopcock has failed and you need to call a pro before you go any further. If you’re lucky enough to have little isolation valves on the pipes right under the bath, use a screwdriver to turn the slot a quarter-turn so it sits across the pipe. But even then, don’t trust them. They’re notorious for seizing up or weeping. Test them by opening the tap again. Assume nothing is off until you've proven it's off. Twice.
Alright, listen up. You think this trade is about heaving on a big wrench until something gives? That’s the first mistake that lands you in a world of hurt. Plumbing isn't about muscle; it’s about playing chess with water, and water is a crafty opponent.
Inside your walls, you’ve got the guts of your house—a whole labyrinth of pipes, the arteries and veins holding back a torrent of water under serious pressure. And those pipes are snuggled right up against things that turn to mush at the first sign of moisture: your floor joists, your plasterboard, your insulation. So, when you try to swap out a kitchen tap like you’re cracking a walnut, remember this: the chaos you unleash won't be a neat little puddle. It’s more like taking a sledgehammer to a surgeon’s table.
Let’s talk about the little things that become big nightmares. You chew up the threads on one tiny brass fitting. That’s not just a new part. That’s your entire Saturday down the drain, another trip to the merchant, and the very real danger of cracking the main pipe you’re wrestling with. Or how about that little weep you decide to ignore? That’s not just a drip. That’s an open invitation for black mould to set up camp, for the timbers of your house to turn to sponge, and for rot to eat away at your home’s bones. The few quid you thought you saved using pliers instead of the proper spanner is chump change next to the bill for a new living room ceiling.
This is why, for us old-timers, the job is won or lost before we even touch a tool. Forget fitting the tap—that’s the victory lap. The final, hands-on part is barely 10% of the whole operation. The real craft, the 90% that keeps your house dry, is the groundwork. It's the meticulous measuring and cleaning. It's laying out every single tool you'll need before you start. It’s making damn sure that the mains stopcock has shut off every last drop of water. Nail that prep, and you’ll be admiring your handiwork with a well-earned brew. Botch it, and you'll be the one making that panicked 2 a.m. call to a bloke like me. And trust me, the price of my beauty sleep is something you can't afford.