After using the water outside, the water pressure in my house goes way down. When we flush the toilet you can hear whistling in the pipes and sometimes bubbling like you would after the water has been turned off. We do not have a water pump so I know it is not that. The only thing I can think is that when we use the water outside it pulls some of the water from the pipes in the house and puts bubbles in them. But I don't know exactly how to fix it. Most of the time it just fixes itself after about a month or two, but I really don't want to wait that long to get my water pressure back.
I am on city/county water. There is no well. I am not sure what my pipes are made of but I think they are pvc. I live in a trailer and I know that the pipes under my trailer are pvc. The pipes coming to the house are about 13 years old. Please let me know if this helps.
Where would I check to see if it is a bad pressure regulator? Would that be on the water meter?
Best Answer
I'm not quite seeing the bizarre method by which this would take a month to clear out, but I think I see at least part of the problem - probably something like a defective vacuum breaker on the exterior faucet is somehow doing exactly that - putting air in your pipes.
If that air remains trapped for some reason (weird configuration of the pipes) it could result in a situation where you have a section of pipe with a trapped air bubble and a little bit of water running in it. This is not particularly common, in my experience - normally air in the pipes comes very noisily out the faucet the first time you turn it on - but to get your symptoms I have to speculate that somehow it stays trapped, and then over the course of a month of using the water with lousy water pressure, it's gradually dissolving the air into the water and carrying it out of the pipe, until finally the bubble is gone and you get normal pressure.
Mind you, it's also bizarre enough that it could be some other thing, but this would fit the air bubbles heard and the month-long recovery. And it may well mean that there is something else wrong for it to be able to happen in the first place, but I can't quite picture what that might be.
You might try removing an aerator on one of your faucets (reduces the restriction there, will let the water run faster) to see if that will help "burp" the air out faster. i.e., you'd see & hear bubbles coming out of the faucet if it was working - don't just leave it off for a month - if it doesn't work in a few minutes, it's not going to help.