DIY Doctor UK DIY Forums

Hi

I bought a simple kitchen mixer tap from Amazon, plumbed it in no problem. It works... but the water pressure is lower than it used to be. It now takes ages to fill the kettle. We are finding ourselves filling the kettle from the bathroom tap because we get impatient waiting for the kitchen tap! It used to have high water pressure with the previous tap, and all the other taps in the house have high water pressure.

I thought maybe the problem was due to the fact that the flexible metal hose attachment which joins onto our internal copper piping is a narrower diameter than the copper piping. So I bought another one, and the manufacturers assured me it contained standard fittings which should work with standard UK plumbing and give decent water pressure... but when it arrived it had the same fittings as the existing one - so I didn't bother trying to install it, I just sent it back.

The problem is, I don't know if I'm right that the problem is caused by the width of the pipe. Can you give me advice on how I tell whether I am buying the right product or not to get decent water pressure?

Here is the product I sent back because it seemed like the pipe was too narrow: https://www.victorianplumbing.co.uk/mod ... ser-chrome

Here is the product we currently have installed: https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B ... UTF8&psc=1

Attached (plumbing-under-sink.jpeg) is a photo of the fittings below our sink - you can see the flexible pipes that come with the tap in the top half, and the original copper pipes in the bottom half.

Hoping someone can help!

Cheers
Clare.

Hi clareplumbing,
The problem is caused by the small bore pipe which feeds the pull out head possibly coupled with a mains pressure in the lower range. Sorry but your only solution is to fit a tap from a different manufacturer. Unless you spend about twice as much you will not see any improvement - you must look at advertised flow rates linked to mains pressure - at 5 bar a reasonable flow rate from the tap would be 8-10 litres per minute.
Regards S

Hi Stoneyboy

Thanks for this!

When you say I need to look at advertised flow rates, is this something related to the product itself and will get published on the manufacturer's site for the product that I'm buying, or is it something related to my local water pressure, and therefore published by my water company?

When I contacted the plumbing supplies company about it, they just insisted that their product would be fine for water pressure, even though I could see that the pipe bore was narrow and therefore it seemed there would probably be a problem with water pressure.

The problem that I have is that most products don't seem to advertise the feed pipe bore width, so it's really hard for me to work out whether it's a suitable product or not. Can you recommend any plumbing supplies sites where they might publish this kind of info?

Thanks again
Clare.

Hi clareplumbing.
I see that your previous tap was ok on flow rates. I also assume you have opened the isolating valves fully.
If you go to tapwarehouse under tap specifications they show flow rates for different pressures. Most suppliers will just claim a minimum working pressure but this is fairly meaningless because although a tap might work it may still take ages to fill a kettle.
If you can determine your mains pressure (must be measured not what the water company claim) then you have the option to select a tap,from the data supplied, which will fill your kettle quickly.
Regards. S.