Low Water Pressure

[MasterPlumbersKeymaster]

Every Summer the water pressure drops off to nearly nothing. I pay the same for water when there is no pressure as when it is high. Is I legal to offer water to customers and not deliver it as promised? I am tired of not being able to take a long shower because of no water pressure. What are my options?

[SylvanLMPParticipant]

Some water departments guarantee you water to the basement (6 PSI) which isn’t much obviously. About delivering AS PROMISED HEY pumps fail Folks take LONG, LONG, LONG showers during periods of drought.

Some kids turn on fire plugs there by putting an increase on demands

Your only billed by the your usage IF you have a water meter as it measures Cubic feet YOU used.

You can install a booster pump if local codes permit WITH a low pressure cut off switch so you do not create a vacuum on the city main.
This will protect the city supply from you causing a vacuum in case of a fire and your pulling the water more than the fire department can draw it.

You can get a storage tank installed also if codes permit.

[hjParticipant]

Just a thought, but you could only draw a vacuum if the house pump is extracting more water that the city system can produce. And if drawing five to eight gallons per minute is enough to overwhelm the city system, then the fire department already has a problem. The low pressure switch would be to protect the user’s pump against seal damage in case of a lack of water.

[SylvanLMPParticipant]

HJ during time of emergency drought conditions especially in densely populated area’s there is a very real possibility of pulling more water out of a water main then the city can supply.

Think about this scenario. Suppose some engineers designed a plumbing system and 80 years later this area now has 2-4 million folks using the water main instead of the few hundred thousand that the system was designed for. Impossible you say THEN NYC and Boston really don’t exist HUH

Now lets try to complicate this a little and put in a few high rise buildings for good measure and also fill these high rise structures with lots and lots of people and bathrooms and fire suppression systems and more pumping stations.

Now lets have some kids opening fire hydrants well upstream of this gravity water system. Now a fire breaks out and the fire department hooks up their pumper and starts draining water from a main already stressed to Max WHERE is the water going to come from?

Now lets imagine that the gentlemen who posted the original question has his incoming supply water off a 4 inch main and upstream of him are several housing developments and possibly a strip mall that were developed long after the original water main was installed DON’T you think that if he did install a pump that he could put a severe stain on this system?

Remember, you can only get so much water in a certain amount of space as water cannot be compressed as readily as “air” HUH?

If your Curious ILL be more than happy to ENLIGHTEN you HOW we big city plumbers OVER come the small main situation as we don’t have a major problem with supplying these building tenants with clean fresh on DEMAND water supply.

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