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Hi Everyone,
For those who like a long read but I could rally do with some advice.
Might be a bit long this. For background. A gardener/landscaping friend of mine is going to install an irrigation system in a customer's garden. He asked me to pop around and measure the pressures and flowrates because the customer complains of poor performance of all the outlets in the house.
I went there, measured the flow and pressure, static and dynamic, and gave him the figures. Easy stuff. I'm not charging for this because he has already found me a couple of nice kitchen jobs, just I'm returning the favour.
Then he asks me if I can give any advice on her issues with the poor performance of the main house. I thought "Why not, it might be interesting" and I was surprised to find this is a spectacular townhouse, all plumbed and finished everywhere to a high specification in the last two years or so. She only just bought the place though. She has a couple of kitchens, half a dozen bathrooms and all that. The bottom of the garden has another detached dwelling where I did my tests from (for the irrigation) and whilst they insist the mains comes from the main house, I'm not so sure.
The figures for the garden side of things are 4 bar static, 3.5 bar dynamic with a kitchen tap open. 24 l/pm and it doesn't drop much when the kitchen tap is open. It's fine for that property and to use the water supply for the irrigation of the big garden.
To the main house after I agreed to at least take a look. I used no tools, only eyes. Plus I didn't take in as much as I could have done as I was a bit overwhelmed when the homeowner took me on a full snagging list tour of this vast beautiful house. Nice enough lady but focused on lots of small details I'd never get involved in.
Kitchen tap ground floor is 12 l/pm. Shower on same level about the same. Top floor only 8 l/pm with a descending head. I didn't measure it but two open showers at the same time is clearly inadequate.
Basement plant room has two 210 litre unventeds linked, nicely installed. Loads of space. A quality job. I am very annoyed that I didn't note the incoming mains arrangement but hey-ho, I got my figures. The system is clearly not good enough whatever.
She's been quoted ten thousand pounds to dig up the road outside (public road), renew the main and "Install a pump". I told her "to get multiple quotes, my advice was honest and free, that the solution wasn't clearly nonsense and I couldn't do any more than that." She appreciated my advice.
I've thought about this a lot more since I got home. There's room for big water storage tanks and a big pump. The main is clearly inadequate but maybe I've been overthinking this and refused a good job for no good reason. The main is poor. Filling a buffer tank (is that the correct term?) would be no problem though. Everything comes from that plant room, balanced cold and the lot. It could just be whole house pumped with a break tank, right?
Any and all input on this is so appreciated. Some of you must have done many similar things.
p.s. I will at least offer to service the twin cylinders but I also am nervous about getting to involved in all this. I don't really know what to make of all this.
For those who like a long read but I could rally do with some advice.
Might be a bit long this. For background. A gardener/landscaping friend of mine is going to install an irrigation system in a customer's garden. He asked me to pop around and measure the pressures and flowrates because the customer complains of poor performance of all the outlets in the house.
I went there, measured the flow and pressure, static and dynamic, and gave him the figures. Easy stuff. I'm not charging for this because he has already found me a couple of nice kitchen jobs, just I'm returning the favour.
Then he asks me if I can give any advice on her issues with the poor performance of the main house. I thought "Why not, it might be interesting" and I was surprised to find this is a spectacular townhouse, all plumbed and finished everywhere to a high specification in the last two years or so. She only just bought the place though. She has a couple of kitchens, half a dozen bathrooms and all that. The bottom of the garden has another detached dwelling where I did my tests from (for the irrigation) and whilst they insist the mains comes from the main house, I'm not so sure.
The figures for the garden side of things are 4 bar static, 3.5 bar dynamic with a kitchen tap open. 24 l/pm and it doesn't drop much when the kitchen tap is open. It's fine for that property and to use the water supply for the irrigation of the big garden.
To the main house after I agreed to at least take a look. I used no tools, only eyes. Plus I didn't take in as much as I could have done as I was a bit overwhelmed when the homeowner took me on a full snagging list tour of this vast beautiful house. Nice enough lady but focused on lots of small details I'd never get involved in.
Kitchen tap ground floor is 12 l/pm. Shower on same level about the same. Top floor only 8 l/pm with a descending head. I didn't measure it but two open showers at the same time is clearly inadequate.
Basement plant room has two 210 litre unventeds linked, nicely installed. Loads of space. A quality job. I am very annoyed that I didn't note the incoming mains arrangement but hey-ho, I got my figures. The system is clearly not good enough whatever.
She's been quoted ten thousand pounds to dig up the road outside (public road), renew the main and "Install a pump". I told her "to get multiple quotes, my advice was honest and free, that the solution wasn't clearly nonsense and I couldn't do any more than that." She appreciated my advice.
I've thought about this a lot more since I got home. There's room for big water storage tanks and a big pump. The main is clearly inadequate but maybe I've been overthinking this and refused a good job for no good reason. The main is poor. Filling a buffer tank (is that the correct term?) would be no problem though. Everything comes from that plant room, balanced cold and the lot. It could just be whole house pumped with a break tank, right?
Any and all input on this is so appreciated. Some of you must have done many similar things.
p.s. I will at least offer to service the twin cylinders but I also am nervous about getting to involved in all this. I don't really know what to make of all this.
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