Water Pressure Drop Due To Softener Installation?

Greg Di

My next door neighbor self-installed a GE water softener and the water pressure in the house is definitely lower than was prior to installing the unit.

The whole house is run in 1/2" so he ran 1/2" right to the softener. The install specs call for 3/4" pipe to the softener (and valves).

I have an identical unit in my house setup the same way, only I READ the directions and installed 3/4" everything on the supply/feed loop back to the existing 1/2". My water pressure is fine.

I've been over there trying to troubleshoot and even bypassing the WS makes no difference in pressure which tells me the resin and guts are OK.

My question is whether or not using 1/2" material into the WS is doing this, specifically maybe 1/2" valves????

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Leo G

Yours worked, his didn't.

You do the math.

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Greg Di

HAHA...You know that and I know that but I don't know enough about plumbing to scientifically rule out something else.

I do know that volume and pressure are different animals and was wondering if the reduced size of 1/2" valves in and out of the WS could be affecting it.

The strange thing is that the house is loaded with 1/2" valves and he only introduced two more....

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WarnerConstInc.

Did he sweat the fittings together or some other type of fitting?

I could see some solder stuck in one of the valves.

Maybe a reduction in volume, not sure about pressure though.

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Leo G

You introduced two more at the very beginning of the system

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Leo G

Im betting the he is saying pressure reduction but really means flow reduction. When the system is closed and static the pressures will probably be the same as it was before he introduced the new plumbing items into the system. But when the system becomes active/dynamic that is when the pressures/flow rates will be reduced.

Those last couple of valves he added were the straw that broke the camels back.

Even if you used 2" piping and a huge commercial water softener there is still going to be flow reduction and a dynamic pressure loss. You put more resitance into the line and it can only go down. The only thing that is going to increase the pressure is some kind of booster.

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Greg Di

Whole house is copper...he used pex for the tie-in...maybe 20ft total

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neolitic

Bingo!
Leo gets another cigar.

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