Modern Lever Action BIB Taps Bathroom Sink Hot & Cold Water Taps Quarter Turn Deck Mounted Washbasin Taps Water Saving Single Lever Taps Polished Chrome Tap Pair for Bathroom & Kitchen - Metal

Easy to operate the lever taps. No leaks so far after some months, as they are probably ceramic discs.

These taps are very good value for money. They are easy to fit and they do what you expect of them. They have made a big improvement to my utility room plumbing.

The pair of Skara chromed-brass lever action ceramic bib taps is exactly what I needed when replacing some forty-year-old wall-mounted capstan taps. No leaks, secure levers, and the action is easy.The coloured top cover is easily removed with a small pointed tool to allow access to the screw holding down the lever. I moved the levers on their splines so that when Shut they are folded back out to the sides, and Open has levers in line with the spouts.The new taps are shorter than the old ones, so I also needed some  25mm long ½” BSP extensions , doubling up on the quantities of  sealing washers  required.With the first tap one washer per ½” BSP joint was perfect with a very snug fitting; tap upright when tight. However, one of the four threads in the other set was 180° out compared with the first; fortunately, simply adding another washer to pack out each joint allowed the tap to be exactly correct. See the picture of it.

I live in an older house with a very basic kitchen. The taps fitted when we moved in to this 1930s property were the "Supatap" design popular at that time but over the years they had just worn out and were leaking and dripping. You can't easily get the specialised washers for obsolete taps and so it was better to replace than repair. (See photo of old, removed taps)The problems I faced with the replacement were related to the age of the property. The taps were back fed bib taps which were attatched to the wall (most modern taps are bottom fed and stand on a flat surface). The standard way of fitting is hot on the left, cold on the right, - but my supply pipes are the opposite way around. Finally modern taps are 6" apart and mine are much closer at about 4". With all these problems I assumed the fitting was going to be a challenge. I finally decided that these taps would be the best direct replacement part without having to do a lot of extra plumbing.The parts arrived early and fitting them took me a couple of hours with most of that time being spent removing the old taps. (see photos of new ready to go in and old removed).First problem, - having the taps the wrong way round was easily solved, - take out the tops of the taps, remove the red (H) and blue (C) coloured inserts and swap them over. By doing this it ensured that the levers folded outwards and not inwards towards each other, - if they had folded inwards in my set up they would have been too close together but folding outward, which is normal, there is no problem. So all my initial problems were solved just by swaping the H and C markers on the taps.Next problem was fitting the taps to the supply pipes. As the pipes are closer together than they should be unscrewing one of the taps causes it's handle to hit the adjacent tap. To get the old taps off I had to dismantle one of them (again, see picture) to allow it to be unscrewed. I then feared that I would have to dismantle one of the new taps to screw it to the supply tap and then reassemble it in-situ. Fortunately the new taps are quite small and compact and could be screwed into the supply pipe directly without touching each other (just!). When the taps screwed tight they were not upright but as I had already bought new tape to pipe seling washers of the right size and some PTFE tape this was not too much bother.Once fitted the taps worked well, a quarter turn from off (without drips) to full on. The cold tap is at full supply pressure so comes blasting out while the hot tap, from the supply tank upstairs comes out more sedately but both easily contrlled within the quarter turn require between the on - off extremes.One thing I didn't particularly like was the fact that when the lever is in line with the spout perpendicular to the wall the taps are off and when the lever is pushed back parallel to the wall it is fully on. I would have expected this to be the other way round. Swapping the H & C sides would not affect this as the taps were always closed when the lever was in line with the supply pipe and spout.

Great product. Looks amazing!

A fabulous bargain

Very straightforward. Work well. Fitted in minutes by HomeServe.

They fit. They work. Good quality.