Low Water Volume… High Blood Pressure- Chelan and Moses Lake Home Inspection Services                                                              

Nothing worse than taking a shower in the morning and someone uses the sink and you are either being scalded or getting a very rude wakeup call due to cold water and your blood pressure skyrockets.

When performing a home inspection one of the basic plumbing tests is to run several fixtures and see how the water flow is affected.

If there is considerable drop in volume this can be an issue that will need to be addressed.

This can happen for various reasons.

So here is the scenario-

Prior to performing this function flow test I checked to see what the water pressure is in the plumbing system. In this particular home the water pressure was 100 psi (normal system pressure should be between 40- 80 psi).

So we have high overall water pressure. Yet when I perform the functional flow test the water volume drops way off….why?

To get a better picture of the issue I put my gauge on the system, read the pressure with no fixtures open then open a cold water valve and see what happens.

As you can see the system pressure went from 100psi to 20psi, yikes!

So what is the problem?

Well this can be several things. In older homes with galvanized plumbing it could be an indication that the pipe have built up so much rust that they have effectively reduced the size of the pipe. Small pipe… little water.

But in this home we have copper piping, and we have little calcium in the system (calcium can create deposits also especially on the hot side of the plumbing system).

So what else could it be? Well it could be as simple as a shut off valve not being completely opened. Well in this home we had a ball valve and it was fully open.

Another issue could be due to a water conditioner, either a valve not open or it may not be functioning correctly. In this case you can bypass the system and see what happens. But this home has no conditioner installed.

Now here comes the not so good news. In older homes it was not uncommon that they undersized the branch water pipes. They may have plumbed the home with ½ lines just after the main water lines which effectively reduce the volume of water in the system. Add a bunch of bends and turns you create friction.  Now if the home has two or three levels you have gravity also working against you. The accumulative effect of this is the water volume is greatly reduced.

In a case such as this re-piping may be the only permanent solution to the home’s water volume problems.
 

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Albert Einstein

NCW Home Inspections, LLC  is a Licensed Washington State Home Inspection service located in Wenatchee Washington serving Chelan County, Douglas County, Kittitas County, Okanogan County and Grant County Washington and the cities of Wenatchee, Leavenworth, Cashmere, Orville, Cle Elum, East Wenatchee, Quincy and many more…    
  
Your Wenatchee and Chelan Professional Real Estate, Home and Structural Pest Inspection Service