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I live in a 50-year old house and the water pressure is absolute garbage. Water out of the shower head shoots out about 6 inches max. Do I need a repiping? What kind of things can I do to fix it myself if possible?
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Jun 4, 2009 16:57
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 08:50 |
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Rd Rash 1000cc posted:There is so many things that can be taken into consideration. Is the buliding main not sized properly( its probably a half inch pipe going into the house). What type of piping is installed (galvy most likely). Everyone could have low pressure around the neighborhood. I know there's alot of variables in the house for sure, considering it's age. We have an small attic space and a crawlspace under the house. Reason I'm asking is that we're trying to prep the house for selling by next year, and lovely water pressure is definitely a turn-off. We'll be doing a lot of work around the house so tearing down walls isn't TOO much of a problem. Should I just get someone out to take a look at the place? My wife's late father did all the plumbing around the house before and while we was good with his hands, many of the repairs done were meant to be temporary fixes until a proper fix could be done which ended up becoming permanent fixes.
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Jun 4, 2009 19:14
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kid sinister posted:Hard water buildup can sometimes cause this, reducing showers and faucets to a trickle. Do you have hard water? Absolutely, the water is terrible. We also have very little hot water flow, especially in the shower. We have to turn the hot water faucet to 100%, and then open up the cold water to about 10-15% to acheive a medium water temperature. I'm crawling all around the house this weekend, documenting all repairs needed to be done in the next few months. Would crawling under the house help to determine anything, like leaks or old pipings or anything? I've already been in the attic and there's nothing to note up there. Oh, not necessarily a plumbing question, but the bathroom fog exhaust fan in the bathroom has been broken and covered up for years now, and we've got all kinds of mold in the bathroom. I plan on fixing it soon, how and where would I vent the fan? I suppose it can't just vent into the attic.
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Jun 5, 2009 21:04
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kid sinister posted:The first thing to do would be to clean the sediment and hard water buildup out the shower heads and aerators, then see if your water pressure improves at that fixture. If not, then move on to the more drastic steps. The show head is fairly new, but I'll hit it with some CLR (does that stuff work?) and see if the situation improves. Would that affect the hot water situation though? We did just replace the water heater in the last 6 months or so when our old one went belly up. There is no old venting in place. The roof was replaced a number of years ago due to a major leak (the roof collapsed into our room actually) and was replaced fairly quickly, at the expense of unnecessary things like vents and exhausts. I have no qualms about installing one though (just installed 2 turbine exhaust fans for the attic today) so installation would be no problem for me. Would I need to use a powered fan to vent, or can it just be a passive vent leasing up to the roof? The existing one is powered but has no power running to it.
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Jun 6, 2009 04:02
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The more I think about it, the more I realize that the cold water pressure is just fine, and all my problems seems to be with the hot water pressure. The hot water takes about 3-4 minutes to rise above room temperature and there's barely a trickle at full blast. Cleaning out the shower heads and faucets have had little to no change. Where should I look first?
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Jun 20, 2009 00:08
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We replaced out 15 year old washer with a brand new, shiny washer. Our trouble is that the new washer drains the water much faster than our old washer, and it's causing the drain pipe to overflow in a matter of seconds. Poking around behind the washer it seems like the drain goes into an U shape before back down into the drain. We've snaked out the main drain all the way to the street. We tried to snake the laundry drain but it's not passing the bend at all. Draino is of no help. My question is, is this bend supposed to be here? It's a 50 year old house and there's a lot of questionable plumbing here and a lot of temporary fixes by the previous homeowner. If it's not, how do we go about fixing this? EDIT: It's probably important to note that we went from a 3.2 to 4.0 cu ft. tub, so I'm sure it's draining way quicker than the old washer. FCKGW fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Aug 2, 2010 |
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Aug 2, 2010 02:46
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Rd Rash 1000cc posted:That U shape is called a P-Trap. It keeps sewer gasses from coming into your house. Right after I posted it dawned on me what was going on. It is a 1.5" pipe for the drain. I saw some pictures of how to increase the height of the drain to allow more volume to hold but unfortunately there's a series of shelves above the drain so doing so would be pretty invasive to the laundry space. I was able to go to the hardware store and pickup a new drain hose from the washer that's a little smaller than the old one. This lets the water drain a bit slower, and the drain fills up to about 1"-2" from the top but it doesn't spill over anymore. Any trouble with this setup?
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Aug 2, 2010 16:51
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Rd Rash 1000cc posted:May put a little more wear on the pump in the washer machine, becuase of the restriction on the drain house. Hmm, well we will be re-doing the laundry area later this year so I should be able to setup the proper drain then. Thanks again.
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Aug 2, 2010 17:07
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How easy/hard is it to replace a Mixet valve? We just bought a house and one of the upstairs bathrooms does not produce hot water, it goes from cold to off. Are we looking forward to drywall holes in our new house?
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Nov 13, 2011 03:13
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Rd Rash 1000cc posted:What is a mixet valve? It's referred to by mixet in the home inspection but it looks like that's the brand name of the company selling what is, in fact, a mixing valve. I'll give it a shot myself and see if it's the cartridge. If not, I have a contractor doing some other repairs around the house, I'll have him take care of it. Thanks.
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Nov 13, 2011 04:13
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Rd Rash 1000cc posted:Take a picture of it, most likely one of us can figure out what it is. Once I get into the house I'll be sure to do just that.
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Nov 15, 2011 06:35
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We just bought a new house and our downstairs toilet drains kinda slow. We figured we would replace the toilet with the same brand from our old house which is also a littler taller. I turned off the water and flushed the toilet, but the water is not draining from the bowl. The tank obviously is empty and doesn't refill, but the bowl fills up with water and then drains back to it's previous height. Is this common? Our old house would drain completely I think, but the other toilets in the house do the same thing as well. Do I need to siphon out the water from the bowl instead? EDIT: Nevermind, poking around a bit more I guess I just have to take the water out myself. No big deal. FCKGW fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Jan 3, 2012 |
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Jan 3, 2012 01:34
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My toilet has recently been taking a long time to fill the tank after a flush, around 7 minutes or so. Flushing and draining are completely normal. What should I look out for?
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Nov 27, 2012 20:16
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My water heater has recently stopped providing an adequate hot water supply. It's a 50 gal AOSmith gas water heater that's original with the house, around 2005. About 2 weeks ago my wife noticed that hot water would be pretty much gone after a single shower, or water not hot enough. We turned the heat up a tick which helped a bit but I still can't take a shower immediately after her anymore. I drained the tank thinking it may be sediment build up but the water came out clear and the issues remained. We had service on the unit about 2 years ago because the burner wouldn't stay on. We wife remarked that she hasn't heard the water heater burner immediately come on after a shower that she used to hear. What are my next steps here? Faulty thermostat?
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Apr 26, 2014 05:38
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What the opinion of using Sharkbite adapters for behind wall repairs? Had a leak yesterday in the wall at the water heater inlet and took out the wall and did a quick repair with some Sharkbites. They seem to be fine for code but I know plumbers are weary of using them behind closed up walls.
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Apr 27, 2021 23:02
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Had our sewer line backup while wife was taking a shower in the upstairs bathroom and it spilled over the sink of the kitchen downstairs. We taken a few showers since and it seems like whatever clog has cleared since then because there’s zero sign of backup now. I stuck an endoscope in the clean out drain in the kitchen and the pipe is pretty junked up, walls are very thick with all kinds of crap. What’s the best method to clear this up? I have a 50 ft snake in the garage, should I just run that down the drain or is there something less invasive I can do?
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Nov 8, 2021 01:45
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I’m replacing a slip on tub spout. The copper stub coming out of the wall is angled down slightly so the old spout had a 1/8 gap at the top filled with silicone caulk. I’d like to avoid this with the new spout. Can I slightly bend the copper pipe up any way or am I SOL?
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Mar 6, 2022 15:59
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 08:50 |
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While researching I read some guy on a plumbing forum who stuck a wooden dowel inside and tried to straighten it out without crimping but ended up snapping the dowel off inside the pipe and now has two problems. Trying to avoid that fate if possible
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Mar 6, 2022 19:57
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