water pressure for a house

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troy griffin

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Hello I am needing some help guidance. I have a house with about 65 psi water pressure. It's a two story house. One the main coming in is 3/4 , goes straight to water softener. Have lower water pressure then i would like, as well as when someone turns something else in the house one. I have 3 bathrooms, a dish washer and of course washer. Also when someone turns the hot water on say in the kitchen the water in master bathroom turns cold. They are both on the same level. I was wondering one if I replaced the main supply inside my basement from 3/4 to either 1" or even say 1 1/4" maybe would that help. Also I am on city water and was thinking about adding a booster pump and tank maybe to add to the pressure. Right now the entire house is supplied by 3/4 to water softener then 1/2 the rest of the way. Thanks for any help.
 
65 psi water pressure is not a bad incoming pressure. Of course you could have excessive pressure loss elsewhere in your system due to long runs of 1/2" pipe and high simultaneous demands. In some cases a water softener could cause excessive pressure drops.
But pressure is not your problem when you say, "when someone turns the hot water on say in the kitchen the water in master bathroom turns cold."
This sounds like a problem with your water heater supply capabilities. Although if you are mixing hot and cold water in the bathroom, using the hot water elsewhere could cause it to get cold based on pressure drop. If backing off of the cold water at the bathroom location doesn't correct the situation then it would sound like the hot water supply.

What do you have for a water heater? And what temperature is it set at?
 
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If you could look at the pressure at different locations, while flowing, that would give you a better idea of how much pressure you're actually losing due to rate of flow vs pipe sizes.
To reduce the effect of pressure fluctuations when different locations are flowing, you'd be better off running the 3/4" far enough to allow the different location(bathrooms and kitchen, etc.) to have dedicated 1/2" feeds.
That would include 3/4" to the water heater as well.

This may be difficult for the 2nd floor demands. In other words try to minimize the multiple demands coming off a 1/2" line.

If you look closely at this pressure loss chart, you'll get a feel for the different effects of flow vs. pipe size and distance.
As an example I've marked the loss at 2.5 gpm and 5 gpm with 1/2" pipe vs. 5 gpm with 3/4" pipe. This shows the major increase in pressure losses when a 1/2" is supplying 2 demands vs a 3/4" pipe. Since this shows pressure loss per 100 feet, 50 feet, which would include the effects of fittings, would be about 7 psi pressure loss difference.

copper pipe losses.jpg
 
As a first step, I recommend an extended backwash of the softener
initiate a manual regeneration , when the unit begins the backwash cycle, unplug the control head and let run for 20 minutes before plugging the unit back in, and then let it complete the regeneration cycle
Then check and see if the pressure has improved.
you may need to adjust the programming to increase the length of the backwash .
Do you have a bypass on your softener?

As far as your cold/ hot pipes. you said ''the master bath'' you did not indicate a single fixture, so i assume
the situation is happening at all of the fixtures in the bathroom and not just the shower/tub
you said you have a basement. trace the hot and cold lines to verify you do not have a crossed hot/cold
somewhere
 
Ok thanks a bunch for the replies. Yes if I turn the cold water down the water at the shower head in the master bath will get hot again. I think this weekend I'm going to make up another gage so I can check the water pressure at every point. I know my problem is pressure just by what iv seen it's just I'm not sure the best way to fix it. I had the idea after doing some reading of changing my incoming supply to one inch, I think the supply coming from meter out by the road is 3/4 so I would increase the size in my basement to 1inch. Take that to and from water softener and then to hot water heater. Then drop from there 3/4 threw out the house to just before each bathroom. Dropping there to 1/2. So maybe a foot of 1/2. I did kind the same thing before years ago though in a much smaller house. Ran 3/4 threw out the house and I lost pressure. It was a single bathroom small house.
 
troy griffin said:
Ok thanks a bunch for the replies. Yes if I turn the cold water down the water at the shower head in the master bath will get hot again. I think this weekend I'm going to make up another gage so I can check the water pressure at every point. I know my problem is pressure just by what iv seen it's just I'm not sure the best way to fix it. I had the idea after doing some reading of changing my incoming supply to one inch, I think the supply coming from meter out by the road is 3/4 so I would increase the size in my basement to 1inch. Take that to and from water softener and then to hot water heater. Then drop from there 3/4 threw out the house to just before each bathroom. Dropping there to 1/2. So maybe a foot of 1/2. I did kind the same thing before years ago though in a much smaller house. Ran 3/4 threw out the house and I lost pressure. It was a single bathroom small house.
Click to expand...
Regardless of the incoming pressure you'll still have the problem of pressure fluctuations when different locations are being fed off a common 1/2" line. With 65 psi, I don't think you source pressure is your problem.

EDIT: What do you have for a water heater and what temp is it set to?
BTW...When you get to pressure testing, make sure it's flowing pressure(Residual Pressure) not static pressure.
 
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Diehard said:
Regardless of the incoming pressure you'll still have the problem of pressure fluctuations when different locations are being fed off a common 1/2" line. With 65 psi, I don't think you source pressure is your problem.
EDIT: What do you have for a water heater and what temp is it set to?
BTW...When you get to pressure testing, make sure it's flowing pressure(Residual Pressure) not static pressure.
Click to expand...

Question how do I get the residual pressure been looking it up and I'm finding how to do the gpm and such. Thanks
 
troy griffin said:
Question how do I get the residual pressure been looking it up and I'm finding how to do the gpm and such. Thanks
Click to expand...
It may be a little difficult for you to do at spots. Typically you would connect a pressure gauge on a hose connection. Observe the static pressure (no water running anywhere.) Then you would flow that same line at a particular gpm and observe the pressure drop on the gauge. Of course you'd have to time the water flow for 30 seconds to a minute depending on your container size. Or you can just observe the pressure drop differences at different locations at just a nominal flow(no measurement.) It's just a more accurate to determine amount of pressure loss vs a particular flow rate. Probably overkill for your purpose of just getting a feel for different pressures available at different locations.

Many people make the mistake of measuring just static pressure coming to their house, which many times is satisfactory. However, you can have a partially closed valve in your service line and it would still show the same static pressure. Nuff said!
 
Diehard said:
It may be a little difficult for you to do at spots. Typically you would connect a pressure gauge on a hose connection. Observe the static pressure (no water running anywhere.) Then you would flow that same line at a particular gpm and observe the pressure drop on the gauge. Of course you'd have to time the water flow for 30 seconds to a minute depending on your container size. Or you can just observe the pressure drop differences at different locations at just a nominal flow(no measurement.) It's just a more accurate to determine amount of pressure loss vs a particular flow rate. Probably overkill for your purpose of just getting a feel for different pressures available at different locations.

Many people make the mistake of measuring just static pressure coming to their house, which many times is satisfactory. However, you can have a partially closed valve in your service line and it would still show the same static pressure. Nuff said!
Click to expand...

Ok yeah that's what I was reading was going to check that this weekend and get back with you. Thanks.
 
Put the water softener in bypass mode and see if you still get the same symptoms. That will rule out the resin bed requiring service
 
I had the same problem a few months ago. Drove me crazy trying to figure out why the water pressure was so bad. The absolute last thing I suspected was the 15 year old water softener. Did as Matt30 suggests and put the softener on bypass, VOILA, water pressure like the house was new! Contacted the company that installed the unit, expecting an expensive repair to have to replace it. Service man came out the next day and it was the resin bed that needed replacing, a much cheaper expense then I was expecting! Since then water pressure has been fine.
 
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