Shower Pipe/Head question

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mcasemo

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Shower Pipe/Head question - pulls a vacuum?

I'm ignorant when it comes to plumbing, so I apologize. I changed the shower head in the bathroom in the place I rent. I put in a Oxygenics to see if would help mask our low pressure problem. In this house the kitchen faucet runs moderately well, the bathroom sink very well and the tub faucet and shower poorly.

After installing the new head I noticed that the water pressure out of the faucet (bottom) is much lower (lower flow) than with the original shower head.

I then removed the shower head and noticed that the water runs at a higher rate out of the bottom faucet when no shower head is on the head pipe. And that the head pipe pulls a vacuum when the bottom faucet is running. Is this normal?

The more the head pipe is restricted, the worse the flow out of the bottom faucet is.
 
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Verdeboy

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Seems to defy logic. I would think that the water pressure coming out of your tub spout is independent of what kind of shower head (or no shower head).

As far as pulling a vacuum, there's a physical law that can account for that. Not sure which one. But it reminds me of chemistry lab, when we used vacuum filtration to purify our products. We turned on the water faucet and inserted one end of a rubber tube into the nipple attached to our Buchner funnel and the other end to a nipple attached to an aspirator connected to the faucet. We would then pour our product slurry onto some filter paper on top of the funnel. All the liquid would get sucked down into the flask leaving the crystals behind in the filter paper.

I did some research, and the physical law is called the Venturi Effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venturi_effect
 
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