Plumbing - Pipe size and water pressure - yup, it’s me again.
By
on
August 2nd, 2009
Hot water is working fine - thanks for your help on that. Since I got such a great response on that - I’ll try another.
I got this bank foreclosure 3+ years ago with no working appliances, barely an infrastructure, well and plumbing issues. It looks like a ranch, but technically it was a single wide trailer set on a beautiful foundation crawl space, that was widened in the back, the roof removed and replaced by a pine Cathedral type ceiling, and then a second unit added (on cement slab), and a two car garage. So I’m dealing with a combined second unit, part trailer infrastructure (plastic piping & hoses), part “house” infrastructure (copper).
The well had problems and its pump was clogged, screen shot, and it brought all kinds of crap into the house. DEP had two tall filters in here to clean up an oil tank spill from the previous owner. Those tanks were absolutely clogged with crap within a year, which was unheard of.
I lost cold water to the kitchen, the shower and tub barely have any pressure on the trailer side of the unit.
So last fall, the tanks were removed, the water pump was replaced, and raised a few feet out of the muck, and water is running in clean again. But there was a lot of muck coming through. Still no cold water in the kitchen, barely any hot water, no bath pressure in the trailer side. It is clear that there is one feed to these three areas that must be clogged.
I know its common to blow the hoses through (not copper piping on this side), yet they are so clogged and tiny, I am considering replacing these hoses, but am wondering that if I go up an eighth of an inch in diameter, will that potentially increase or decrease the pressure.
What I’m thinking of doing is to remove one of these hoses going to the tub, and the connection system that feeds three areas, bring it to Lowe’s, replace those exactly the same size, but also get one hose slightly larger in diameter so I can try it out before replacing the other hoses.
I am on an EXTREMELY limited budget - officially broke, so I’d appreciate some creative &”elbow grease” type of suggestions. I have some decent tools, but with school starting in a month, I need to bite off only what I can chew so that we have water. We’ve had to go long enough stretches without it. Not good for kids.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, I’d appreciate any opinions - yes, I know, I need a plumber. Can’t get anyone out for small or budget jobs.
robnrobn2000 says:
It just may be that the junk you had in there has traveled to your faucets. Turn the water off and let pressure off by opening valve. Take the knob off and see what you find in there. It may have all kinds of junk in there. If there is still stuff in there you may need to turn the water on just a hair to push it out. It will come out where the knob was. If this does not work you can try blowing the lines out. If you go to a different size pipe the bigger you go the less water pressure you will have and the smaller the more you will get. the size you are talking about wont really make that much difference.
August 2nd, 2009 at 5:21 pm
fizixx says:
Going up in diameter will decrease the pressure.
If you remove all the piping and clean it thoroughly you shouldn’t have to buy new. Remove them and clean them one-by-one as you can. Coil and soak them in a hot washtub of soapy water if you can. Maybe there is a cleaning agent you can buy to remove potential sludge you may suspect is inside.
FYI: With a little basic math and physics the pressure will drop off as you increase the radius of the tubing (or pipe or hose etc). It’s roughly like this:
The new pressure will be: 1/(A + 1 )²
A is the increase in tubing radius.
e.g. So if you increase the radius of the tubing by ⅛” that means you have a new pressure of about: 1/(0.125 + 1)² = 0.79, which means the new pressure will have dropped by about ¼ compared to the original pressure. So if you *almost* double the size of the radius you will drop the pressure by half.
August 2nd, 2009 at 6:13 pm