Low cold water pressure

AnthonyL · 2010-10-22T20:34:04+00:00

We're on the last property on a shared system. The cold waterpressure has never been brilliant but most days the upstairs showerwould work fine. Recently the pressure has fallen to the point I canjust put my finger under the tap and stop the flow, the flow rate isalso low.Next door, which is downstream, is fine and our problem exists evenwhen they are not using any water.The internal stop tap is fully open. The house and external plumbingwill be fairly old.Corrosion? How best to tell if there is a leak between next door andhere?Any other advice?

Oct 22, 2010 21 Replies

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Tim Downie 15 years ago

I think the problem is that they use a wedge shaped metal shutter (a bit like a sluice gate) thats forced into a shaped metal groove to shut the water off. It only needs the tiniest bit of scale in the groove or any other crud to stop the shutter closing all the way.

A proper stopcock uses a rubber/metal interface and doesn't suffer from this problem.

Tim

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<me9 15 years ago

If used part open (or even fully open in soft corrosive water areas) the gate can erode either due top cavitation or corrosion, sometimes resulting in full flow, otherwise a failure to cut off completely.

I've given up using gate valves.

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