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I need some help – The water pressure at my house is sadly lacking. I probably would have never sought to change it but I went on vacation and stayed at an apartment, that when taking a shower you had to be careful or you would lose some skin – it was great! When I got home the dribble from my shower just wont due. I have a 1hp deep well pump and a 60 gallon holding tank. I went out and bought a new shower head that did next to nothing. When some one else starts the other shower at the same time the water flow reduces significantly. Is there anything that I can do to increase my water pressure. I will add that it seems as if I have good water pressure at my hose fittings on the outside of the house. I have a decent spray from the nozzel. Thanks – Terry
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Why bother with the shower? Just go into your garden and hose yourself off.
But you may have a volume problem instead of a pressure problem. The clue is the difference between the outside and inside "pressure". Do you have a filter somewhere? I live in an old mansion [on a well] that had a filter "protecting" the inside lines and had the same problem. A plumber was call and he found the filter and we removed the clogged element and that solved the problem.
-Peter
*In a well system, the pump is usually controlled by a pressure switch. Pressure switches are commonly available with a 20psi difference between when the pump is turned on and when it is turned off. These are typically available with 20/40, 30/50, 40/60 psi on/off points. As far as I know, these settings are always fixed and I have not found an adjustable pressure switch. The higher the pressure that the pump is required to work against, the more wear and tear on the pump, of course. Thus, if you have a pressure switch with a low setting, you can replace it with one having a higher setting. As p m says, however, if you have severe restrictions in your plumbing system, you might not get the result that you hope for. (Examples of pressure switch:http://www.farmbid.com/SuperStore/SuperStore-Product.asp?ProductID=8852 ) You could also install a booster pump. These will give you higher pressure downstream of the booster pump without additional wear and tear on your main well pump. I am not sure as to the various correct ways to install a booster pump, but I plan on having my submersible well pump output into a standard water pressure tank in the pump house with a standard 20/40 psi pressure switch and this will supply the irrigating water for my acre or two, and then have an additional booster pump and a smaller pressure tank in the house to give me the higher domestic pressure that I want. The folks selling solar powered pumps talk about this two stage pumping as a desirable setup when dealing with low power solar pumps, but I haven't seen it in any of the domestic water systems that I have looked at that use power from the regular utility grid.Perhaps you could replumb your house with 1" pipe to your showers and go with volume instead of pressure (whoops, that would require violating the 2.5gpm requirement, so, of course, is a no-no.) If you can believe the advertising, there are shower heads that claim the "compensate" for low pressure such as:http://www.backbenimble.com/new/pages/double_shower/I remember something about a shower head that utilized compressed air to enhance the feeling of the water spray, but I haven't seen one - although perhaps it is included in the $850 model that is among those mentioned in this review of shower heads:http://fumbling.com/phloem/writing/shower-head.html
*What is the water pressure in your house? How old is the house? What type of piping do you have? The holding tank should have a pressure gage on it and you should be able to say that the pump comes on at X psi and goes off at Y psi doing its job of recharging the holding tank.Typical pressure with municipal water supplies is around 60 psi. For each foot of elevation difference between the outside hose bib and your shower head (I'm guessing this to be 15' in a typical two story) the pressure difference would be 6.5 psi but this does not take into account pressure drop due to flow restrictions.With no other info, it sounds like old, corroded galvanized pipe to me.
*Terry,The holding tanks I'm familiar with have a bladder inside that compresses when the well pump fills the tank. Sometimes these bladders have minute leaks and need to be recharged periodically. There should be a valve stem on the top of the tank if yours has this. Check the pressure with a tire gauge and fill with compressed air if necessary.Eric
*Older pressure tanks don't have a bladder. The top half is air which is compressed by the water pressure. About twice a year you need to kill the supply and drain the tank because the air will become disolved in the water and you have a tank full of water. The most commaon symptom of this, beyond it looking pretty much like a plain old galvanized tank, is that the pump will cycle on/off at short intervals and you can recognize a variable pressure supply at an open faucet or hose bib.
*I agree with Casey that a fix may well involve the pressure switch. User adjustable switches may be rare, but I have never found one that I couldn't adjust once I got inside of it. Turn a screw, stretch or clip a spring - whatever it takes to change the on/off pressures.To diagnosis this I would do the following: Install a pressure gauge on the storage tank and on a fixture, such as a garden hose (which you can take anywhere you want). Watch the gauges as you turn the shower and other fixtures on. If you don't at least 20 and preferably 30 psi at the storage tank, you need work on the pressure switch, pump, and/or well. If the tank has decent pressure, but the pressure at the fixtures is more than 10 psi below the tank pressure, you have a restriction between the tank and the fixtures. Some possibilities include: filters, water softeners, iron removal units, etc; too small a pipe (1/2" for more than one fixture or for a long run to a fixture); scale or rust inside of the piping.With your good water pressure at the hose bib; particulate filters, water softeners, iron removal units are a definite possibility because the run to the hose bibs typically bypasses those filters. Look at the pipe sizes used. If 3/4" goes to the hose, but 1/2" (and I've seen 3/8" flex!) on long runs to the fixtures could explain the difference in pessures.Scale or rust would tend to effect all pipes (in accordance to their use) so that seems less a likely explaination for good hose and bad shower pressures.For the shower only, you can remove or drill out the little flow-restricting orifice in the 2.5-gpm shower heads for better flow. Illegal in many areas, but your chance of doing hard time for the offense is slight.Post again when you have more info and you can get more specific suggestions. -David
*Thanks for all the suggestions - I'm going to look into some of the suggestions tomorrow and get back with you all. Thanks again. Terry
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I need some help - The water pressure at my house is sadly lacking. I probably would have never sought to change it but I went on vacation and stayed at an apartment, that when taking a shower you had to be careful or you would lose some skin - it was great! When I got home the dribble from my shower just wont due. I have a 1hp deep well pump and a 60 gallon holding tank. I went out and bought a new shower head that did next to nothing. When some one else starts the other shower at the same time the water flow reduces significantly. Is there anything that I can do to increase my water pressure. I will add that it seems as if I have good water pressure at my hose fittings on the outside of the house. I have a decent spray from the nozzel. Thanks - Terry