Garden tap low pressure or flow

[benlonguk]

Folks,

I'm hoping someone could help with a problem i have with a garden tap. I've recently moved in to a house about 4 years old, the garden tap looks like it was installed in a couple of minutes by the housing developer straight through the kitchen wall to the garden. There is a T piece from the cold water pipe under the sink, the main pipe goes along the back of the cabinet a few inches then up the kitchen sink tap and the other goes up a couple of inches and then straight out through the wall to a tap. There is a stop tap up from the T piece to shut water off to the garden.

With the stop tap fully open the garden tap as extremely low flow of water, hardly enough to move a sprinkler connected with any length of pipe. If i run the cold tap in the kitchen sink for a couple of seconds the flow increase and the sprinkler is able to work, but only covers

4-5 feet either side.

The kitchen sink taps are fine as are every other tap in the house. I'm wondering whether the stop tap or i guess there is a one way valve somewhere in the piper before the tap to prevent contaminants from coming back up the garden tap to the water supply. But before I take anything apart I wondered if anyone could recommend a place to start?

Thanks in advance

Ben.

[David Lang]

Hi Ben

Just a possibility. Is the tee piece one of those self cutting fittings? If so, the small circular blank the fitting cuts out could be causing a blockage.

Dave

[Brian G]

Ben,

There could be an anti-siphon valve in the tap body itself that's causing the problem.

Try taking the tap itself off and then see if that improves the water flow from the open end - failing that, (if I recall correctly - and the plumbers here will correct me if I'm wrong) it's possible to put a stop tap on the 'wrong way' around which will either cut the water off or, drastically reduce the flow.

To confirm this, look on the stop-tap and there should be an arrow which will point the way the water must flow through it - that's presuming it's a 'proper' stop tap and not just a gate valve or an in-line service valve.

Failing that, have a look at each section of the pipework feeding this tap for partial blockages.

Brian G