Thursday, February 19, 2009

Under pressure!


Today, after canceling on us twice, the city contractor came and replaced our water line. This is another one of those big changes that makes living in the house *a lot* more comfortable. So far we've experimented running multiple fixtures (basement sink + kitchen sink, kitchen sink + bathroom sink) and tested the shower head etc. It's *very* impressive. I think we had forgotten what modern water pressure looks/feels like.

This is the new pipe in our basement. It's connected to the old 1/2 inch copper pipe, so there are probably more optimizations we can do to increase pressure further, but for now we are just enjoying the stronger water pressure.

In the end it cost us $1400 for our part of the line after some negotiating. Aside from the scheduling troubles we're fairly pleased with the job so far.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hello,

So let me understand this: you kept your existing 1/2" copper in the house, but the city upgraded your outside connection to 3/4" copper?

Was it the upgrade to 3/4" copper to the street that increased the water pressure?

techhandyman said...

Yes the 3/4 inch reduces to 1/2 inch just after it enters the house. We think the pressure increase is because the old water supply was made of lead and it was most likely bent, depressed (since lead is so soft) and probably less than 1/2 inch to begin with.

We could probably get some additional pressure advantaged by replacing the 1/2 inch up to the point where it branches off for the hot water heater but we will leave that project for another day.