noisy pressure booster comes on very often

[Hagopm]

Hello all!

I have a pressure booster fitted in my 4 storey house. It comes on whenever a toilet gets flushed, and whenever someone runs a tap enough to brush their teeth or wash a plate. Its quite noisy and uses electricity. Essentially it means that I am using electricity whenever cold water is supplied anywhere. I would like to reduce this usage for environmental and financial reasons.

The pressure booster (a Grundfos Home 4.5bar Booster) is currently set to a pressure of 3.5bar. Cold water pressure in the house is more than sufficient. If I were to reduce the pressure on the booster to say 3bar, would this reduce my electricity usage? Would I have to make any other changes to the plumbing, for example, adjust any valves? Also, would it reduce the frequency with which the device functions?

I am assuming that as the booster is required to maintain pressure, lowering set pressure might save some electricity but would not reduce the frequency of the booster's functioning.

Thanks for your opinions.

 

[Agile]

it will make little difference to how often it operates.

There is a small reservoir of pressure on the device but that will only cover a couple of litres.

If its really bothering you then you could add a white potable expansion vessel which would give a reserve of about half its volume.

But I suspect you are only concerned because you think its using your electricity.

The motor is probably about 1/2 kW which would cost about 7p an hour to run continuously.

Not worth bothering about in my opinion!

Tony

 

[Steelmasons]

Check pre-charge pressure in vessel.

 

[Agile]

The pressure vessel is only 8 litres.

So it would not provide as much as 6 litres for flushing a toilet. They only give up to half their volume in most settings.

There is a setting which controls the cut in pressure and widening that would give a small increase in supply( depending on how it is set now ).

Tony

 

[Hagopm]

Thanks alot for your opinions guys. As suspected, there seems to be no point fiddling with settings. We'll just have to live with the noise.

Is there any way to bypass the pressure booster to see what pressure is like without it active?

 

[Agile]

It would normally be fitted with bypass and isolating valves so it can be maintained.

Tony