Your Utility Company Isn't the Problem

Your shower is weak. Your bath fills slowly. Run two taps at once and neither one is worth using. Everybody calls this low water pressure, and that is where the mistake starts. Your house runs on two separate quantities, not one. Only one of them is pressure. The other one has its own name, its own unit of measurement, and its own set of causes, and almost nobody uses the word. A house can sit at completely normal pressure and still deliver a bad shower. This matters because the two problems have very different price tags. One of them you can fix yourself in about a minute with no tools and no parts. The other one is a plumber, a bill, and a bad afternoon. And there is no way to tell them apart by standing in the shower and feeling the water. There is a way to tell them apart. It takes five minutes, it happens at your outside tap, and the plumbing code actually assumes you are going to do it. Before you buy a pump to increase water pressure in your home, watch this. CHAPTERS 0:00 The Plumbing Problem With a Misleading Name 0:59 The Number Most Homeowners Never Check 2:48 When the Obvious Fix Makes No Sense 4:25 The Test That Shrinks the Suspect List 7:06 When “More” Becomes the Dangerous Direction 8:38 Five Minutes Before You Spend a Dollar WHAT THIS VIDEO COVERS The difference between pressure and flow, in plain language Why a water pressure booster pump fixes one of these and does nothing for the other The five things that restrict flow in a house, from free to expensive Why pressure that is too high is the more serious problem, and what the plumbing code says about it How to test your own water pressure at the outside tap, and what the number actually tells you This channel diagnoses. It does not instruct. Nothing here is a repair guide, and nothing here asks you to adjust a valve, open a water heater, or touch anything you should not be touching. The point is to know what is wrong, what it means, and roughly what it costs, so that the person you eventually call cannot sell you something you never needed. SOURCES AND FURTHER READING Everything stated in this video traces to one of the following. Where a figure varies by jurisdiction, the video says so. Portland Water Bureau, Water Pressure and Flow The distinction between pressure and flow, the diagnostic split by fixture, and the note that what seems like low pressure is sometimes low flow. https://www.portland.gov/water/drinki... International Plumbing Code, Section 604.8, Water Pressure-Reducing Valve or Regulator (ICC Digital Codes) The 80 psi ceiling and the ASSE 1003 requirement. Check which edition your jurisdiction has adopted. https://codes.iccsafe.org/s/IPC2021P1... UpCodes, Water Pressure-Reducing Valve or Regulator (cross-jurisdiction comparison) Useful for seeing how the same section reads across different states. https://up.codes/s/water-pressure-red... New York City Administrative Code, 604.8 The example of a jurisdiction that works to 85 psi rather than 80. https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes... Minnesota Rules 4715.1740, Water Pressure Pressure reducing valve required where street main pressure exceeds 80 psi. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/rules/4715... Minnesota Rules 4715.1810, Water Pressure Booster Systems The rule that puts booster pumps where they belong, which is on genuinely insufficient supply pressure. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/rules/4715... Lancaster County Joint Municipal Water and Sewer Commission, minimum pressure guidance A utility explaining why distribution pressures vary so widely by elevation and demand. https://www.lcjmwsc.com/faq/whats-min... #LowWaterPressure #plumbing #homeinspection