Splashing kitchen tap

My kitchen tap generates a lot of spashing water when it is turned on. This is because a single solid tube of water pours out of it. Even when the tap is only lightly turned on a lot of water splashes up over the draining board and work top.

I used to think there was nothing that can be done about it until I became aware of ‘tap aerators’. These inserts work by mixing air with the water to make it more bubbly and reducing the pressure of the water stream.

Instead of a solid jet of water, with an aerator you get a bubblier softer stream of water.

In order to be able to fit an aerator the end of the tap will need to be removable. I used an adjustable spanner to get the end off as it was tighely screwed on.

water tap aerator 5

Here is the old insert. To work out what size of aerator you need you’ll need to carefully measure the diameter of the thread. Mine was 22mm.

water tap aerator 3

I ordered this 22mm aerator from Amazon, and it arrived the next day. It arrived in a tiny package with no instruction, but it isn’t too hard to figure out how to assemble it.

water tap aerator 2

I put the above pieces together like this:

water tap aerator 4

Then I screwed it into the tap and gave it a test. It did aerate the water and reduce the splashing but there was an obvious leak around the edge of the insert. One of the reviews on the Amazon produce page also mentions this problem. It could be due to the short thread length, or because my tap doesn’t have anything inside it for the supplied washer to compress against.

I solved the leak with PTFE tape. An essential item if ever you are doing minor plumbing work.

water tap aerator 6

I wrapped about 40 cm of the tape around the thread and then trimmed the top bits so they didn’t block the flow.

water tap aerator 7

I then screwed this back into the tap whilst it was turned on until it was far enough screwed in to create a proper seal.

And here is the final result. On the left you can see the original water stream. It is clear because it is pure water. On the right is the aerated stream which is cloudy as it is mixed with air bubbles.

water tap aerator 1

The reduction in splashing has made this a worthwhile purchase, plus the chrome colour of the aerator cover looks much better than my old black plastic tap end.

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