Water — the plumbing side
The small jobs, done properly
Nobody builds a business on outside taps. They are, though, the jobs where the difference between careful and careless is most obvious — because you can see all of it.
Taps inside
A dripping tap is a cartridge or a washer, and which one depends on whether it is a quarter turn or a screw-down. Ceramic cartridges are usually a straight swap. Where the tap itself is twenty years old and the body is pitted, replacing the tap is often less than the labour spent trying to nurse it.
New kitchen and basin taps go on with isolating valves fitted underneath if there are not any already, which turns every future job — including the one you do yourself — from a full house drain-down into a two minute one.
Outside taps
Teed off the rising main inside, through the wall, with a proper isolating and draining valve on the inside so it can be shut off and emptied before the first frost. A double check valve is fitted as a matter of course: it stops anything from a hosepipe left in a water butt or a pond being drawn back into the drinking water, and it is required rather than optional.
Hot and cold outside is perfectly possible too, and worth asking about if you have dogs, muddy boots or anybody who washes a car in February.
Why it matters
The pipe run is the part you will look at for the next twenty years. Clipped level and following the brick courses, or wandering across the wall — same tap, same price, entirely different job.
Ring it, or write it down
Say what it is doing and roughly where you are. That is usually enough to know whether it is an hour or a morning.