Water – How to figure out why the water pressure is basically zero

If you are on a municipal system and have pressure that high, you quite likely already have a pressure reducing valve (PRV) installed near your water meter. The International Plumbing Code requires PRVs on any water supply over 80psi. If this is the case, your PRV may just need adjustment. As they age, the spring regulating the device's operation can soften. Or it could be faulty and need repair or replacement. If you do not have one, you need to have one installed.

If you are on your own well with a pressure tank, the pressure switch controlling pump off operation needs adjustment. Other types of systems should have similar arrangements to control pressure.

How to adjust a PRV. There is typically a bell shaped housing with an adjustment screw and lock nut on top. Loosen the lock nut and turn the adjuster counter clockwise a small amount. The adjustment can be rather sensitive. Operate the faucets and toilets in your house to allow the system to equalize to the new pressure setting. Take a new pressure reading. How much it changed will give you an idea how much more adjustment is needed. Typical water system pressures should be somewhere in the 40-60 psi range. Shoot for the high 50's.

If the PRV controls supply to a fire sprinkler system (it normally shouldn't), you will need to check with a fire supression professional to determine if and how much you can reduce the supply pressure.

If you do need a new PRV, check with your municipality, they sometimes offer rebates to help mitigate some of the cost.

That sounds like an overly complicated setup with far more pumps than it should need. Or else you said pump when you meant tank in two places, actually, re-reading it.

In short, you can have as many pressure tanks as you like. Locating them closer to the point of use (the house) would be helpful, to a limited extent. That limited extent is the "effective volume" of the pressure tank at the house - while it's got pressure, you get better pressure at the house. As soon as it runs out of water and you become dependent on the pump, the pressure loss of the 300 feet of 1" PVC to the house comes into play, until you slow down your water use to the point where the pressure tank at the house fills up again.

If you do not change the setpoint pressure, the peak water pressure in the house will not be affected at all. Once the pressure tank at the house is depleted, the pressure will be the same as it is now. If you have a pressure gauge at the house now (or can add one) it might be useful to know the pressure at the house when "loads of interest" (showers, say) are drawing water.

Most pump controls can be altered to have a higher setpoint pressure, and most well pumps will provide that, within reason. General recommendations are to stay below 80 PSI - but if you are now running your pump on at 20 off at 40 (a typical default) you could turn it up to on at 30 off at 50, or on at 40 off at 60 - you will need to adjust your pressure tank (and any you may choose to add) for the higher pressure, particularly if they are bladder-type tanks - with the system drained, a bladder tank should typically be 2 PSI less than the low water pressure setpoint (ie, 18, 28, or 38 for the three ranges I've just given) and you may need additional pressure tank volume (because the effective volume of water a pressure tank can hold goes down as the system pressure goes up.) So, you can probably get more pressure without another pump, and possibly without another tank, but we'd need more details of what your system is doing now to know that for certain.

Unless your water use is extreme, 300 feet of 1" PVC pipe should not have a lot of effect on the pressure - at 5 gallons per minute, about 2.2 PSI - at 10GPM, 8.2PSI, 15 GPM, 17.4 psi