Five minute DIY: Removing an air lock from your tap

Removing an air lock from your taps will help the flow of water through your home's water system while also relieving a headache or two for yourself.

You might be wondering why your hot water tap is spluttering barely any water at you? Well, it’s because there’s an airlock in your tap. Basically, because air is lighter than water, it can often get trapped in all the twists and bends of your home’s water network. All you have to do is blast out the air lock for freely flowing pipes… and it only takes five minutes.

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What you’ll need:

Hosepipe

What to do:

Step 1: Where the hose at?

In order to blast an air lock out of a tap you’ll need to get a length of garden hose. That’s all you need really. It wouldn’t hurt keeping an old towel nearby just in case things get wet, but hopefully they won’t.

Step 2: Attach the hosepipe

Next up, attach length of hosepipe to the affected tap and connect the other end to a working direct feed tap. In most cases this will be the cold tap on the kitchen sink. You may need a fairly long length of pipe in order to do this, but trust us, it’s the easiest option.

Step 3: Blast the lock

In order to blast the air lock out of position all you have to do is open the two taps (the main tap and the air locked tap) and allow the pressure of the mains water to force the air back out of the locked tap. Leave to run for several minutes and then make sure to turn off the air locked tap first.

Step 4: Repeat and remove

Once you’ve left the two taps running for several minutes you can check to see if the air lock has been blasted out or not. Make sure to undo the pipe from the highest tap first, otherwise the water will come rushing out of the bottom and will absolutely drench you. If the air lock is still there then just repeat the above process until it’s blasted out.