My friend’s house has horrible water pressure. There’s nothing wrong with the plumbing its just that the previous owners had the pressure way too low.
Is there a valve she can adjust somewhere to up the pressure?
Its a newly (in the past 5 yrs or so) built house in Daly City, CA if that matters…
Is it on city water, or does it have a well?
Its on city water.
Assuming the main valve (And all other valves within the house) are full open, there’s nothing you can do.
You could, however, call the city and have them come take a look. They might be able to up it a little, of make sure there isn’t a break in their line somewhere, or tell you there’s nothing they can do about it either.
ETA, you say there’s nothing wrong with the plumbing, but are you sure the pipes arn’t clogged with minerals (calcium, lime etc)?
If your house is old, and remodeled it may be that your original service line is too small for the renovated plumbing, in which case you can do something, very expensive, to make it much better. Pay the water folks to give you a larger service connection. (They might not want to do it for any price, though.)
Failing that, and even more expensive is to pay for a cistern, and pump, using the available city water and the size cistern that will allow you to increase pressure for as long as the cistern stays full, which, given nightly periods to refill, should be easy. A good shallow well pump will give you lots of pressure. A couple of hundred gallons is enough storage for any but a large family.
Maintenance will be an important issue. Also, putting it where it cannot freeze is really important. Worst of both worlds, you pay for the water, and then pay to pump it.
Tris
Since your friend is on city water and the house is fairly new, it is likely not a service size or mineral deposits issue. I would tell your friend to check with the nearest neighbors. If their pressure is low, then it’s a city problem. OTOH, if their pressures are okay, then it is your friend’s problem.
As Joey P. pointed out, you need to check the main valves. IME, there are two; one at the service entrance - the water meter, and one at the house. The house valve is usually located in a green or black plastic box set in the ground in a flower bed. It’s possible you won’t have a house shutoff valve, I’m not familiar with the codes in California. If both of these valves are fully open, and you should close them fully and re-open them to be sure, and there is still low water pressure, it is time to call a plumber.
One possibility occurred to me while I was typing the above. Perhaps the former owners were environmentally conscientious and/or cheap and installed low flow devices throughout the house to save water? I realize it’s not likely, but you really don’t want to know the cost of having your slab jackhammered out to repair a crimped pipe under there. Ask me how I know this, I dare you.
I had a friend who thought his house had low water pressure.
Turns out, ALL of his faucets were clogged with debris. You might want to check the screens on your faucets…
I’m pretty sure that you’re confising pressure w/ volume. It’s very likely that there is a restriction in the system that is limitiing the volume of water bing delivered to the fixtures.
It could be a valve, or valves, not being fully open, or it could be old lines that have beconme restricted by a buildup of solids deposited on the pipe walls.
Pressure is constant, volume is dependant on the sze of the piping.
A modern house should have a water pressure regulator somewhere near where the city water enters the house or near the water meter on the house side. It can be adjusted to raise or lower the max pressure in the house (or it can be replaced if it doesn’t work). There is a nice Q&A with a diagram at http://www.boltonpoint.org/PDFs/PressureRegulatorsQ&A.pdf
Second A.R.Cane on this-people often conflate flow(volume) with pressure (force).
While true that increasing pressure will increase flow,that also increases stress on the system.If flow is restricted due to scale build up,occlusion/sediment,increased pressure could jeopardize weakened pipe wall/components.
Verify for restriction before upping the pressure.As pointed out prior,it is common for faucets/taps/valves to become impeded.A whole house filter can easily rectify this,if sized and outfitted correctly.An unmaintained whole-house filter can also be a fine whole-house flow restrictor. So look for one of those as well.
In about 1964, a local architect bought the lot next to us. He designed and built a big house for his big family. A few months later, he came to regret saving a few bucks by using such a small diameter pipe for his main inlet. If they used two showers at once, both were a fat dribble. :smack:
If that’s your problem, you can dig up the original connection to replace it.
Pressure can be fixed. The thing to notice is that it is rare to have all taps operating at once. Thus a weak external system can be boosted at any point(s) you want for the internal system. My own system, a Laars Mighty Stack, has a pump to keep the pressure up. When you turn on any tap, the pressure is there and the pump starts to pull in more from outside. There are the same pressure relief valves as any other water heater, so no need to worry it gets too high.
Your speaking of a booster pump which most municipal water suppliers do not allow.
Check those faucet screens! We had that problem in a custom-built house, 20 years ago. I don’t recall if we ever definitively got to the root cause (everyone had a “definitive” theory, including experienced plumbers and contractors, but some were mutually contradictory, and others were disproven) This I know: the screens kept clogging for a year or more after we started checking the screens with increasing frequency for re-clogging, but eventually all was well, and remained so eternally thereafter. It seems we needed enough pressure/flow to flush the crud out of the system, and partly crud-clogged screens limited/prevented that flushing
When I was a kid (about 14), we lived in a house that had weak water pressure and was on municipal water (in San Jose), and a friend who was a plumber told us our pressure regulator needed to be replaced. The regulator was a lump on a pipe outside the house that we’d walked past many times and never really noticed. Anyway, I went with him to the place where he bought the new pressure regulator, and I recall there being some discussion about which one he wanted, and the gist that I can remember is that the regulator is set to a specific pressure and has a relatively small range of adjustment. Once “we” replaced the regulator, we had great water pressure.
So maybe that’s what your friend needs.