Dear all,
I'm thinking of having an unvented cylinder installed to improve my hot water supply. I really need to get the water main upgraded though. The current pressure/flow rate (and I've never fully understood the difference) is pretty poor. I can stop the flow of water at my kitchen tap with my thumb.
Thames Water say that the minimum which they are obliged to supply is
1 bar, but they've said on the phone that if I can do the thumb-on-the-tap trick then my pressure is probably too low. The only means I have of measuring pressure any more accurately is using the presure guage on my boiler when I fill the radiators from the mains. This registers a pressure within the system of a about 1.5 bar. Is this a remotely accurate way of measuring mains pressure? I understand that this is measuring (if anything) static pressure. Is that what Thames Water's 1 bar minimum refers to I wonder. Maybe I just have very strong thumb muscles.What I would really like is for the old 1880 0.5" lead communication pipe from the main in the street to the stop valve at the boundary of my property to be replaced at their expense. The main runs on the other side of the street, meaning quite a lot of digging or moling, and for me to pay for the work would run into four figures I think. I've also tried the lead-pipe-complaint technique, but they say that the pipe will be sufficiently scaled by now not to be a problem (in fact I guess that's why the flow is so bad, it's probably got an internal diameter of about 3mm!).
Any hints or tips on this? Anyone who can save me £1,000+ is entitled to the resale value of all the reclaimed lead ;-)