water pressure drop with new shower and mixer

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kingchai1

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hi. I'm a proficient diy'er but no pro by any means. just put in a new bathroom in my basement so i could have a tub/shower. pressure in house is great. old bathroom in same place had great pressure. with the new bathtub spout and shower, the pressure is lame.
I plumbed the 1/2" copper myself and used some street elbows. do these restrict flow? the new shower/mixer is an american standard boulevard. the one-lever mixer type where you rotate the lever to both turn it on and adjust temp simultaneously. Is this restricting the water flow, maybe? I haven't tiled yet, so I can still unscrew the densshield board and repair if need be. very frustrating. any suggestions?
By the way guys, I also installed a Toto Aquia toilet and it was a piece of cake, thanks to your advice. used tapcons/hammer drill to bolt the rear mounts into the concrete floor and then installed pretty much like any other toilet. that toilet flushes like a tsunami.
 
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hj

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I am not sure if you are confusing pressure with volume. The new shower head will be flow limited to comply with Federal regulations, but your old one was not.
 

kingchai1

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i'm also wondering, hj, if using street 90-degree copper elbows would have throttled the flow?
 

Jadnashua

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Take a bucket and stopwatch, measure the flow, compare it to the valve's specs. The tub should be unrestricted, but still may only be 5-6gpm. The shower is restricted to a max of 2.5gpm.
 

kingchai1

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i tested it and i'm getting 3.7 gpm from the tub spout. so what does this tell me?
 

Jadnashua

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Did you flush the lines before inserting the cartridge after soldering the pipe in? You may have some crud lodged in the pathway, restricting the flow. If you used the IPS threaded connections and used tape, you may have been a bit sloppy and it's blocking some of the flow. A street elbow won't affect the flow any more than a 'normal' elbow since the ID is the same when you take into account of the pipe you attach it to.
 
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