NoFortress
New Member
I purchased a home with a well recently; before this house I've never had well water and have been trying to education myself on how it works. The showers in the house all seem to have poor water pressure and I've been trying to diagnose this. I've showered in homes with well water (my in-laws have well water, for instance) so I know the situation can be improved. The water pressure is also inconsistent; all of the showers seem to have poor pressure, but many of the sinks do not. There's a double vanity in the main bathroom and my sink has much stronger pressure than my wife's. I've cleaned out the aerators on all the sinks and replaced every shower head in the house, but this did not seem to have any impact on pressure.
Background info: the house is ~18 years old and was rented for most of its life. There is a water softener but I suspect the tenants did not consistently refresh the salt. Many of the fixtures have scale buildup on them. We have a pressure tank in our basement with a standard 40/60 pressure switch on it. I took a timelapse of the gauge at the pressure tank here (I turn a shower on shortly after the video starts). What I expected to see was a slow, constant decrease in pressure from 60psi to 40psi, at which point the switch would turn on the well pump and it would increase back to 60psi. Then rinse and repeat. Instead it decreases like I would expect to 50psi, then drops rapidly down to 30psi before the pump kicks on. I took a real-time video here (I fiddled with the screws a bit on the pressure switch between these two). I similarly took timelapses of the pressure at two different shower heads; here is one on the main floor of the house and here is one upstairs (the pressure tank is in the basement). From what I've read I can expect a 4-5psi pressure decrease per floor, but the upstairs shower head is getting down to 11psi before the pressure switch engages. These are the things I do not understand:
Background info: the house is ~18 years old and was rented for most of its life. There is a water softener but I suspect the tenants did not consistently refresh the salt. Many of the fixtures have scale buildup on them. We have a pressure tank in our basement with a standard 40/60 pressure switch on it. I took a timelapse of the gauge at the pressure tank here (I turn a shower on shortly after the video starts). What I expected to see was a slow, constant decrease in pressure from 60psi to 40psi, at which point the switch would turn on the well pump and it would increase back to 60psi. Then rinse and repeat. Instead it decreases like I would expect to 50psi, then drops rapidly down to 30psi before the pump kicks on. I took a real-time video here (I fiddled with the screws a bit on the pressure switch between these two). I similarly took timelapses of the pressure at two different shower heads; here is one on the main floor of the house and here is one upstairs (the pressure tank is in the basement). From what I've read I can expect a 4-5psi pressure decrease per floor, but the upstairs shower head is getting down to 11psi before the pressure switch engages. These are the things I do not understand:
- Why does the pressure at the tank decrease rapidly below 50psi just before the switch engages? Is this expected? I can't tell, given the sudden drop in pressure, if the pressure switch is engaging at 30psi or 50psi.
- Why am I seeing such low pressure at the shower head?
- Why is the pressure curve so different at the pressure tank compared to the shower head? The decrease is fairly linear between the high and low points at the shower, but much more erratic at the pressure tank.