For the past while, whenever I’ve had the chance, I’ve been looking for what I might need to fix the front outside tap.

At first, it would spray water when we shut the water off, so we just left it on. It made it more convenient when using the hose, anyhow. Then, after the end of the hose broke off and I tried putting on another one, I found it had started spraying water all the time. So we’ve had to use the tap at the back of the house – and almost 300 ft of hose – leaving the front one shut off in the basement.

I figured I just needed to replace the O ring (or whatever this type of seal is properly called) inside the tap, but do you think I could find one? I was also looking for replacement taps, since I thought that might be easier (and I figured it was due to be replaced, anyhow), but I couldn’t find those, either. I wasn’t even sure what section of various stores to look in. The closest I could find to what we had were laundry taps, and any ring seals I saw were not for inside the tap itself, but for the couplings.

I needed to go to town today, so I remembered to take a photo of the tap before I left. Once at the hardware store, I just showed it to an employee, explained the problem, and asked him where I might find what I needed.

Of course, he needed to know where it was leaking from, which was right at where it turns on and off.

Well, it turns out there’s a reason I couldn’t find what I was looking for.

They don’t carry that type of seal.

In the end, it was easier to just replace it!

Also, the new taps were, indeed, in the plumbing section (not the gardening or laundry sections, where I had also looked), but not where I had been looking. According to the label, the tap is designed for boilers. 😀

Once back at home, I dug up some thread tape and headed out to replace the old tap. The old tap was painted over a bit, but nothing a wrench couldn’t get loose.

On screwing in the new tap, however, I found an unexpected problem.

This is the new tap, with the hose connector facing down. Notice how much of the threads are exposed? In the old tap, there was nothing like this!

It wasn’t actually screwed in tight in the above photo. I got a daughter to turn the water on in the basement to test it out, and I was happy to see it did not leak at all, but as I turned the tap on and off, the whole thing would turn and wiggle even looser.

For the tap to be on good and tight, we get this.

All it took was a quarter turn to tighten it, but it would go no further.

It’s a flexible hose coming through the wall, so we could move that board the tap is affixed to, if we wanted, and reposition it to the side. I don’t really want to put new holes in the wall, then have to seal the old holes, get paint to touch up the wall (the house was painted the summer before we moved in, but we don’t have any leftover paint from that), and end up with a tap that’s lower and harder to reach to screw the hose into.

So we’ll just leave it like this, with the hose sticking out sideways. 🙂

Of course, I had to open up the old tap to see how bad the seal was inside.

It…

…looks perfectly fine!

The seal is still flexible, and nothing is cracked or broken.

I have no idea why this tap started spraying water like it did, where it did!

So I’ve kept it.

In the end, I’m happy with the new tap. I like the triangular design over the round one, as it can be gripped more easily and securely. Especially with wet hands.

So now we have front and back hoses again!

We might need to get another hose for the front, though. I looked for something to fix the hose that broke, but everything I could see would require me to cut off the metal reinforced end. I might just wait for the fall sales and pick up another one, instead.

Just maybe not at Walmart.

The Re-Farmer