Sensor Taps Kept Failing at a Brookvale Childcare

The situation

A childcare centre in Brookvale called us in to look at the taps in the children’s bathroom. They’d been fitted with electronic sensor taps, the kind that run water automatically when a hand is waved underneath, because good hand hygiene is essential in a childcare setting. The problem was the taps themselves. They kept failing, and every time one went down, it meant a call-out and a repair bill.

What we found

Sensor taps have a lot more that can go wrong than a normal tap: a power source, wiring, and an electronic sensor, all packed into a fitting that gets used, splashed and wiped down dozens of times a day. Batteries die, wiring corrodes, and sensors drop out or stop reading properly. In this case, when one tap started playing up, the others usually weren’t far behind, so the centre was rarely dealing with just one fault at a time.

Anything electronic with a tap is another thing that can fail. A mechanical valve has almost nothing in it to go wrong besides seals due to old age, and when it eventually does, it’s a simple tap replacement, not a call-out for a specialist part or a rewiring job.

Over the years, the repeated repairs had cost the centre a lot of money, just to keep the hand-washing basics working.

The fix

We recommended removing the sensor taps altogether and replacing them with mechanical lever taps. Push or pull the lever and water runs for six seconds, long enough for a child to wash their hands, then it shuts off on its own. No batteries, no wiring, no sensor to lose calibration. It’s a fully mechanical valve doing the same job the sensor taps were meant to do.

The job was carried out outside the childcare’s operating hours, so there was no disruption to the day-to-day running of the centre and no safety concerns from plumbing work going on around the children.

The outcome

The centre now has hand-washing taps that meet the same hygiene need, without the ongoing repair bills. If a lever tap ever does wear out, it’s a straightforward like-for-like replacement, not a diagnosis of a failed sensor unit or a wiring fault. Switching away from the sensor taps has already saved the centre thousands of dollars it would otherwise have kept spending on repairs.

Managing taps in a childcare, school or commercial building that need to hold up to constant use? Our leaking tap repairs and replacement team can recommend tapware that’s built for reliability, not just convenience, and we’re happy to work around your operating hours to avoid disrupting your day.