Unsatisfactory main house water pressure

[Diver Fred]

As a late arrival to this thread a question - have you tried taking the water softener out of the circuit? Does that make a difference?

 

[Madrab]

As a late arrival to this thread a question - have you tried taking the water softener out of the circuit? Does that make a difference?

We have a water softener, but this is NOT the source of the problem since bypassing it makes no difference

 

[polesapart]

I spent a bit of time at the neighbours yesterday in order to understand the state of their system and I was surprised to find that they do have some of the conditions that we have:

- Tap pressure appears similar and has some of the same surprising characteristics such as the downstairs toilet being weaker than the utility tap

The basins in the downstairs toilets may be intentionally fitted with restricted-flow "water-saving" taps.

 

[itsthejb]

The basins in the downstairs toilets may be intentionally fitted with restricted-flow "water-saving" taps.

That’s an interesting point that could explain it. We noted also that the taps appear to have puny piping - 10mm or even less

Additionally we measured the pressure from the garden tap and got 1.6bar

I’m now inclined to think we may just need to fit a booster pump in the airing cupboard to serve the bathrooms

 

[Madrab]

Nope, not as simple as that unfortunately. You could use the small in line booster pumps I guess but that's just getting reeeeeally complicated with multiple points of failure. That and if it draws more than can be made up by the mains then system could get into all sorts of bother.

If the property had an unvented cylinder installed from new then I'd find it hard to accept that the mains wasn't able supply both the cylinder and the cold throughout the house from the get go, it wouldn't have passed muster if it didn't. If it can't cope without being pumped then it's going to struggle no matter what. Anything that is mains fed, undoubtedly the whole house cold and hot by the sounds of it, would have to be supplemented by a mains pump. They only deliver 12L/Min at around 1.2 bar, if you mains can already supply that level, then the mains pump will never be utilised.

Even if the other outlets are fed by 10mm pipe, there should still be enough mains pressure to supply everything. Has your neighbour been in since the house was new and have they always seen issues? Does the pressure at the outside tap stay around 1.6bar when say 2 or three outlets are open at the same time or does it drop off markedly?

 

[itsthejb]

Nope, not as simple as that unfortunately. You could use the small in line booster pumps I guess but that's just getting reeeeeally complicated with multiple points of failure. That and if it draws more than can be made up by the mains then system could get into all sorts of bother.

Hmmm interesting....

If the property had an unvented cylinder installed from new then I'd find it hard to accept that the mains wasn't able supply both the cylinder and the cold throughout the house from the get go, it wouldn't have passed muster if it didn't. If it can't cope without being pumped then it's going to struggle no matter what. Anything that is mains fed, undoubtedly the whole house cold and hot by the sounds of it, would have to be supplemented by a mains pump. They only deliver 12L/Min at around 1.2 bar, if you mains can already supply that level, then the mains pump will never be utilised.

Regarding the state of play when the house was new in 2014, it doesn't seem impossible that, since the supply would have been serving fewer houses back then, that it did have better pressure. We do, for example, have the problem that we couldn't get fibre internet to the house due to lack of capacity. ie. they installed the service but then the number of houses expanded beyond the capacity.

Has your neighbour been in since the house was new and have they always seen issues?

They haven't been in the house since new. As I say, the taps seemed somewhat similar to here (and they also have the fundamental prob of not being able to run multiple taps at once) although the shower seemed somewhat more powerful, or at least they don't have the wildly inconsistent pressure that we get:

- Reasonable power for the first ~20 seconds
- Drops right down to something like a dribble for a couple of minutes
- Can return to moderately acceptable pressure

The previous owner here bought in 2014, but she simply said "never had any problems with water pressure", which it's really a very powerful (or detailed) testimony.

At least if the supply pressure was consistent, we'd be able to live better with it

Does the pressure at the outside tap stay around 1.6bar when say 2 or three outlets are open at the same time or does it drop off markedly?

That's one to check when I have a moment