Civil Engineering Question - water supply

Yup, a good idea. The reading with no water flowing is more important to your case. That will tell you the pressure in the mains. Once you start flowing water in your house, you are measuring the capacity of your own personal small (3/4") line to your house, which will hold no weight for the developer.

Also a good idea. The Fire Dept will do just what Otto revmmended for your house, measuring pressure with no flow, and pressure with various hydrant flow rates. The fire dept can flow enough water to actually stress the mains and simulate increased developement. You should be able to find out the hydrant flow tests for your neighborhoods branch line AND the branch line that they are intending to close the loop to. Also your city engineer should be able to tell you the sizes of both of these lines. I’d politely request this information directly from city staff before talking to the council. So far the information that you relayed from the city staff seemed reasonable.

A competent civil engineer should be able to take the city water maps, the current developement and the planned developement and come up with reasonable predicted water pressures. In fact, I’d be suprised if a large devloper had not already had this done.

The political problems discussed here may be hard to address. But improving water pressure in a house looks as if it shouldn’t be.

I’ve always had a well water setup. This includes a pump and an air/water accumulator tank. A pressure switch on the tank tells the pump when to turn on and off. Within certain limits, you can change the switch’s settings to get the pressure you want.

Would it not be possible to add such a system to a house that’s on city water? Perhaps there are rules about doing so, but the technical aspects of this seem simple. For perhaps $250 in parts, it should be possible to solve the problem of low water pressure.

One possible minor additional tactic for the political situation is pointing out to the city council that numerous studies have shown that residential developments end up costing cities money – the additional taxes are more than offset by the additional services needed by the new residents. If the councillors are really motivated by increasing the tax base of the city, this may help motivate them to look more closely at the development. Of course if they’re just paid off by the developer it won’t help move them, but publicly making this point might make their conflict of interest more clear to the voters.

I don’t have any cites with me, but searching with ‘smart growth’ or ‘sprawl’ should turn up some sites with those studies eventually.

Oh, and a possible reason for

is that the original zoning assumed a septic system for each house, rather than sewer lines to a central treatment plant. You need to keep septic systems at a reasonable distance from each other, but of course once you put a sewer line in, you can connect up houses as densely as you want. Obviously, I don’t know if that’s what’s going on in your neighborhood.