Any plumbers in the house?

chrislocalboy

chrislocalboy

chrislocalboy

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Stoke on Trent
Just wondering if anyone with the knowledge can give me any guidance, have recently moved into a new house and the water pressure in the bathroom sink mixer tap is pants!! the bath taps are working fine however.

Have had a quick look myself and have found 2 pipes at the back of the sink (hot and cold) with little valves on which appear to be the cut the water off, these are both set to where they should be..... which is on ;)

Anyone got any suggestions? does this sound like it can be fixed easily or will it require my floor ripping up etc :mad:

Cheers
 
Sounds like it's the valves that you've found, if the pressure is ok on the bath taps.
Try a bit of on/off fiddling with the valves. If that doesn't work, turn the water off and replace the valves with new ones. good luck.
 
chrislocalboy said:
Just wondering if anyone with the knowledge can give me any guidance, have recently moved into a new house and the water pressure in the bathroom sink mixer tap is pants!! the bath taps are working fine however.

Have had a quick look myself and have found 2 pipes at the back of the sink (hot and cold) with little valves on which appear to be the cut the water off, these are both set to where they should be..... which is on ;)

Anyone got any suggestions? does this sound like it can be fixed easily or will it require my floor ripping up etc :mad:

Cheers
Click to expand...

Are the taps fed from the mains, or from a header tank in the loft?
 
The_blue said:
the screw on the valve should line up with the flow. some new taps (if not most) only have a tiny inlet after the pipe, about 1.5mm. this would kill pressure
Click to expand...

Yes both of the screws line up with the flow........ this other screw your talking about.... will it be on the pipes really close to the tap?
 
I had this once and it was air locks (especially if the house has been empty for a bit)...

The solution was (paid £30 call out to find this out - well worth it !) 5 minutes:

1) Attach hose pipe to kitchen tap (off mains with heaps of pressure)
2) Attach to upstairs cold tap
3) Turn on both taps for 30 seconds or so

The effect is to force water back up into the hader tank/hot water tank. The results no more air locks !
 
Hodders said:
I had this once and it was air locks (especially if the house has been empty for a bit)...

The solution was (paid £30 call out to find this out - well worth it !) 5 minutes:

1) Attach hose pipe to kitchen tap (off mains with heaps of pressure)
2) Attach to upstairs cold tap
3) Turn on both taps for 30 seconds or so

The effect is to force water back up into the hader tank/hot water tank. The results no more air locks !
Click to expand...

The tap is a mixer tap so this may not be possible, might be worth a try if I can manage to get my hose pipe to fit over the end of the mixer but I don't think I'll be able to.

Thanks for the suggestion :)
 
I'm not a plumber.

You really need to give more info on this.

The typical layout for a house is something like this.

You can see that the bath and the sink come from the same feed (the bath can be done in 22mm pipe) then it uses something like this to take the feed to the sink to 15mm.
If you do have an airlock, then the pressure at the bath taps would be low as well.
If you have isolating valve like this (good idea as it saves you turning off the the water to change tap washers) they do restrict the flow, but only slightly. (those can also be in brass)

The problem with mixer taps on a sink is the amount of room you have for pipes, and they often fit very small bore pipes coming up into the tap.
So despite the fact you have bath pressure, the combination of small bore tubing on what is a low pressure system equals a low flow rate.
The instructions for a tap like this read...

The tap is installed into a low pressure (tank feed) system, the MINIMUM height from the outlet of the nozzle to the underside of the water tank should be at least 2 metres to ensure adequate performance.

If you live in a modern house with low ceilings, and the tank is sitting on the joists in the attic, 2 metres is hard to achieve, and that only gives adequate performance. (which is prolly what you have)

Your house might vary hugely from above, but it may well be a feature rather than a fault.
The feature is a single tap on the sink, and I have explained some of the faults that they can give.
 
I dont wanna hijack this thread but it is something that you budding plumbers can answer.

I get limescale build up quite bad around taps/kettle etc. Do those coil thingys that you can wrapper around the inlet pipe actually work or is it a con? :confused:
 
leaskovski said:
I dont wanna hijack this thread but it is something that you budding plumbers can answer.

I get limescale build up quite bad around taps/kettle etc. Do those coil thingys that you can wrapper around the inlet pipe actually work or is it a con? :confused:
Click to expand...

I live in one of the hardest water areas in the country :(

This is what I was told by a guy who is a qualified plumber (and has been for over 20 years)

Yes the do work :) but this is what he reckons.

If the device wrapped around the pipe is downstairs (in your kitchen) then all water you take from the downstairs old tap will have reduced limescale.

Here comes the downside...my house is plumbed similar to the picture in my post above, so most water in the house then goes and sits in a huge tank in the attic.
He reckons that this "sitting" of the water makes it change back to what it was when it came in.
This is gonna depend on many variables like tank size / water usage plumbing system etc etc as to how long it sits for.

Don't take the above as strictly fact, but he has been plumbing in my area for over 20 years, and has seen it all so to speak.

A forum to look at...
the electric water treatments you are asking about are ok with running water because they change the stucture of the scale if it sits in a water tank for to long it can revert back, see the hydraflow add on this page for more info
 
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Ah brilliant. Maybe i should get one for my gaff then. It would probably save the dishwasher and washing machine some agro as well as give the kettle a new lease of life.

Wheres a good place to pick one up from? B&Q/Homebase ?
 
Wheres a good place to pick one up from? B&Q/Homebase ?
Click to expand...


Going to depend what the shops are like in your area, but I think for anything like that your best going to a local plumbers merchants.
They might also be able to give you advise on the best one to use.

I think B&Q are dear (someones got to pay for the huge building in a prime location)
I have 2 plumbers merchants near me that are a lot cheaper than B&Q, and the stuff the sell is generally better quality.

B&Q own this place (I think) and they are often cheaper, and sell better stuff.
 
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