My wife and I recently bought an 83 year old house with some needed fixes that we mostly knew about ahead of time... but as neither one of us has ever actually owned a house before, we're learning certain things as we go along.
I know basically nothing about plumbing. Before we moved in, we had an inspection done (which I unfortunately couldn't be present for) and the inspector noted low water pressure that he said was caused by "galvanized water mains". I went back and checked the pressure and it seemed fine. Had a plumber look at it and said it looked fine to him too. (He didn't actually do a pressure test, just ran some water.)
After moving in, we pretty quickly figured out what the inspector was talking about. Run one water source and the pressure's fine - not great, but fine. (It's a little low when running something like an outside sprinkler, but fine for showering or dishwashing.) Try to run two sources at once, though, and both drop to a trickle. Downstairs sources seem to get about a 65/35 split if I've got the first and second floors competing with each other. Run the basement washing machine and flush the first-floor toilet, and you basically cannot take a shower at all for about 10 minutes. But even when running two sinks on the first floor, the pressure drops noticeably. Potentially more annoying, my shower head on the second floor seems to be suddenly getting clogged up with specks of rust. It was fine for like six months, but within the last 2 weeks or so I've got water jets going everywhere and occasional small bits of rust popping out.
I guess my question is, does this sound like a problem with the pipes coming in from the street, or with the pipes in my house? The pipe from the street is huge, and I can't believe it would be blocked up that much - it's gotta be eight inches around, and appears in basically decent shape to me. It does look like it's probably original to the house, though, or at least very old. Our house is also very close to the street and most of the pipe itself is contained within our basement, so it hasn't been exposed to exterior water or tree roots or anything like that.
The pipes inside our house are basically all clustered in one area; the washing machine in the basement, first floor bathroom and kitchen, and second floor bathroom are all basically in one vertical line going up. I guess I'm hoping that there's just one nasty old little pipe that needs to be replaced and that would solve the problem. Am I just dreaming or is this possible? How much might this repair cost?
And what exactly does the term "water main" refer to in a house? (I'm from NYC; to me, a water main is a 15 foot cement pipe carrying water to three million people.) Is it the pipe from the street or a central pipe carrying water throughout the house?
I'm *really* hoping I don't have to replace that massive pipe from the street; I wouldn't even know who to call for that, and would imagine it would be a huge expense.
Thanks...