Intermittent low water pressure

[Clive Arthur]

I had a shower mid morning today, and after applying shampoo, the shower stopped, barely a drip. I waited, and was just about to drip and slide my way to the bathroom on the floor below, when the shower came to life again.

It was off for a few minutes. Funny thing is that this happened last week too. There's no-one else using water here. We do have poor pressure sometimes, I had thought it was early morning when people are getting ready for work which wouldn't normally affect me.

This is an old three story terrace though the internal plumbing is quite new and I'm confident any problem isn't internal. We have a pressurised hot water system, so no header tanks.

Given that both times it happened recently the outage time was long enough for a shower, is it possible that next door is using a pumped shower and lowering the mains pressure for me? I will ask them, of course, but only if it's not a stupid suggestion.

Possible, unlikely, nail on head?

Cheers

[Harry Bloomfield]

Clive Arthur pretended :

Possibly, sometimes terraced house would share a common water feed. Time maybe to get your own pump installed.

[ARW]

Same for some semis around here.

[Mike]

I had a similar problem except the drop in pressure only happened on Saturdays. I complained to the water supply company, they installed a data logger and subsequently they made some adjustments to the control gear which resolved the problem.

- Mike

[Chris Hogg]

Are you at the end of a terrace supplied from one end? A work colleague of many years ago was in such a situation, and his supply pressure was all over the place, depending on how much water was being drawn off by properties further up the pipe and closer to where it was teed off from the main supply.

[Tim+]

I presume that you?ve checked that your own stopcock is fully open?

If the problem is outwith your house I think you should contact your water company.

Tim

[Brian Gaff]

Well if it is, surely then it points to some kind of poor flow rate on the system to the upper flats.

Besides it surely should not be able to actually stop a flow, reduce it maybe. Brian

[Robin]

I'd second the recommendation that you talk to your water company first. They both know what pressure they aim to deliver to you and have the means to monitor it.

Bear in mind that the service standard is only to maintain a minimum pressure of 0.7 bar in your communication pipe. That's a head of only 7 metres. Even if they maintain 1 bar at the external stop tap and you have few losses internally it's only 10m. So if your terrace doesn't have a "lower ground floor" and this shower is on the second floor...

[Allan]

[snip]

If you can pick up a pattern, talk to your water supplier. Talk to your immediate neighbours as well so see if they have noticed anything different about the water pressure/supply to add evidencxe.

My (electric) shower was cutting out in the morning (there was a safety cut out which operated when low water pressure to avoid scalding).

I talked to my water company, and explained the issue and pattern, and after a bit of pushing and shoving, they finally admitted there was an issue with some of their kit locally and did something about it, and seem to have sorted it and I'm now having an uniterupted morning shower.

:-)