Water – long run from main

water

I am getting city water (have a well now). The pipe from the main to the meter box is 3/4 inch. The distance from the meterbox to the house is 650 to 700 feet. Does it make any sense to run a 1 inch line from the meterbox to the house to combat friction loss? The house has mostly 1/2 inch lines of various material-copper plastic- it's a 160 year old farm house.

Best Answer

The intuition of the commenters is good. There are online tables if you want to to calculate it. The vertical distances that you mentioned are not significant. 8 feet of elevation is about 3.5 psi.

enter image description here https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/pressure-loss-copper-pipes-d_930.html

Let's assume that you want a flow rate of 10 gallons per minute, and the pipe length is 700 feet. The pipe losses are as follows:

3/4"    91 psi loss    (700 * 0.13)  - Clearly unacceptable
1"      21 psi loss    (700 * 0.03)  - Might be OK depending on your street pressure
1 1/4"  8 psi loss     (700 * 0.011) - Good, this is where I would want to be
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