I recently purchased my first home. It has two bathrooms and the water pressure in both is less than ideal. What are some steps I can take to increase the pressure?
Plumbing – How to improve the water pressure in the shower
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Usually cases of a slowly decreasing amount of water are that a filter has become clogged. Does your water supply have sand particles coming through? Check the diverter heads for other faucets in the house. Are they getting many small particles trapped in them? Sand in one faucet tells you that all fixtures are getting clogged, some more slowly than others. This sandy junk can come through municipal water systems, or it can come from your own well if you are on one.
If you are getting much of this coming through, you may choose to install a whole house water filter to prevent that.
Whatever you find in those other faucets, if the problem is both the shower head and the tub spout, then the problem is in the fixture itself. Is this one of the new style fixtures that regulates the temperature of the water? I have read that those temperature regulators can sometimes be a problem themselves, improperly shutting down water flow.
If not that, assuming this is a cartridge based fixture, then you will need to pull the cartridge from the faucet. This entails removing the handle, then removing a locking nut that holds it together. Please shut off the water BEFORE you do any of this! The cartridge will come out, although this sometimes takes some amount of persuasion.
You can buy either a complete cartridge replacement from most manufacturers, or just a set of new o-rings etc., to rebuild the cartridge. Large home centers will have an entire wall filled with various such replacements. Bring in the old cartridge if possible to get a match. Knowing what company made your fixture will help.
A possibility is that a piece of rubber from an o-ring or other seal has cracked and become lodged in an orifice inside the cartridge. Look for this, or for other problems when you open up the cartridge.
The usual way I'd hook up a house to a tank or cistern (such as in a low-yield well situation) would be to have a pump going into a pressure system (pressure tank + switch) and then supplying the rest of the house. The pressure tank would normally operate at 40/60psi: When you draw water, you're always pulling from the tank until the pressure drops below 40psi, at which point the pump kicks on and runs until the pressure is 60psi.
This system also shows the supply side coming from the well, but the supply is really irrelevant.
You can also use a jet pump or pretty much any other type of pump as opposed to a submersible so long as it's capable of reaching 60psi. Some people also run at 30/50. Over 80 and you risk toilet tank valves and faucets having trouble/leaking, and too low and it's just not useful (and the pressure switch probably has a low operating limit too).
There are also pressure switches that have a shut-off feature where if the pressure drops below 20psi, they totally switch off because they detect an "out of water" situation. This is a nice cheap way to go as opposed to more expensive electronic shut-off systems, but when they trip they require a manual reset (flipping the little arm on the side).
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Best Answer
This is an effective trick a plumbing contractor once told me.
Go to your local home improvement store and buy a cheap shower head (the one I picked up cost $1.50). If you look down inside of the showerhead you'll see a washer which constricts the water flow. If you take a drill and enlarge the hole, thereby increasing flow, the water pressure will increase. I didn't think it would work but it did!!
If you want to go the expensive route, there are pumps you can purchase that will attach to the piping and add pressure to the water. I've heard of such a thing but never looked for one.