Poor water pressure - Home Boost ?

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Hi Everyone,
We have poor mains water pressure (8l min), by the time it's gone through our Worcester 28CDI the hot water flow rate in out bathroom upstairs is around 6l min.
I was considering fitting a home boost water pump on the cold main just before our boiler.
I have nowhere else to fit this vertically on the cold water main in to my house.
My question is, has anyone fitted one of these/ are they any good ?
Thanks in advance.
John
 
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Do you know why your mains pressure is low
Have you taken a pressure reading with no water flowing
Sometimes the cause of the problem lies outwith your home and is the responsibility of the water supply company.
 
its illegal to pump from the mains you can only pump from a tank
otherwise you can get back flow into the mains from other houses
 
its illegal to pump from the mains you can only pump from a tank
otherwise you can get back flow into the mains from other houses
Over here we use 100 gal or 400 l per person per day. If you know your consumption and its variation you could size a tank so that it almost always delivers what you need.
 
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Tank in the loft, 22mm feed down to the boiler.

However if the tank is ever emptied faster than it fills the boiler will presumably shut down due to low inlet pressure.
 
Obviously big all hasnt seen the home boost solution. Ive not fitted any the just seem quite pricey £299 iirc. I think because it doesnt pump fast than 12lpm its allowed to be fitted directly on the mains.
 
its illegal to pump from the mains you can only pump from a tank
otherwise you can get back flow into the mains from other houses

a pump which has a controller which limits @ 12lpm is allowed, the byelaw stipulates thus.

the homeboost is the grundfos one i think, which incorporates a water store as well, which changes things yet again.

but pricey, i think the TWS solutions are better value, although I've fitted neither i know which i would choose.

***EDIT***

I just checked and its the little salamander one, which looks crap.
 
btw you are describing poor flow, not poor pressure.

What colour and size is your incoming water main, up to the stopcock? How old is your house? What does the stopcock look like?
 
Thanks for all the replies.
Your are correct the Home boost is very pricey.
When I reported this to my local water company they said all was 'just' about fine but they changed the old stop cock in my front garden for one of the new plastic ones as the old one was leaking. (I have made sure it is fully on).
From there is is lead under my front garden in to the house.
Perhaps I can borrow something from a friend who loaned me the flow cup to test the pressure.
Regards John
 
if you have a lead pipe it is probably old half inch, and may well have been squashed during the last hundred years.

If you can dig it up and lay a new 25mm plastic pipe all the way into the house, I bet you will find the flow improves dramatically. As the old pipe is lead you may be eligible for a lead replacement subsidy - ask your water company to test the drinking water for lead content.

This will be a "do once" job unlike buying a pump, which will need occasional maintenance and replacement, and will be annoyingly noisy.

I did one and it made a great improvement. I had to join onto a 100-year old stopcock which was much more difficult than your new plastic one will be.

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Possibly, . . .

Low flow + high pressure = narrow pipe

Low flow + low pressure = pipe condition unknown

High flow + high pressure = pipe condition unknown

High flow + low pressure = large pipe

With city water I get 24 l/min but my street pipes are from '64.
Copper pipes in our area started getting pinhole leaks (4 l in 3 minutes for our house) but the water company added orthophosphate to the water and that seems to have arrested the problem at the price of a possibly unknown risk to human health.
I had a plumber bypass the leaky pipe and add shutoff valves to isolate sections of the piping so if I do work at least some of the house still has water.

People here who have iron pipes are having fits. They flush a toilet and the shower turns scalding.
 
UK piped water supply systems are much older than in most of the world, and although they have been frequently updated and improved since 150AD, the supply has always been relatively low pressure, and parts have only been replaced when they needed it; hence it is common for houses to have a water storage tank to give fast flow especially for filling baths and to balance out periods of high demand.

Interestingly (perhaps) there is letter in the archives from Jonathan Swift 1667-1745 (author of Gulliver's Travels) when he lived in London, complaining to the water company about poor pressure which meant his upstairs taps often didn't run.

In living memory, the few Roman lead pipes in London still part of the network were eventually replaced with new mains. Hampton Court still has a private water supply to the Royal Chambers in lead pipes that are about 500 years old.
 
It seems you would have, per capita and compared to world averages, unusually high rates of lead poisoning. Or, maybe in the US, this kind of brain damage is oversold.
 
limescale generally coats the insides of the pipes and usually prevents the lead dissolving in drinking water.

There is not very much lead piping left now. My 1920's house had steel pipes (which reached the end of life due to cavitation corrosion on an elbow. and my 1905 house had lead pipes whiich reached end of life due to an underground burst.

Street mains are generally steel or plastic.

Subsidies are available to replace lead pipes in houses if the drinking water is affected.

Lead damage (especially to the brains of babies and children) reduced dramatically when leaded petrol was outlawed.
 

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