How would YOU do this?

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Darkone

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Hi all,
I may be overthinking what I want to do here but I wanted to see what you guys thought before I start hacking stuff up.

First a little background-We had this house built about 2 years ago. About a year ago I added a softener myself, plumbing and all. The problem now is that since I did not opt for the soft water loop when we built (should have) is that my back hose spigot is now soft. Obviously this is a waste of soft water & salt and is not good for the soil long-term.

So what I am wanting to do is run a bypass line from the front of the house to the back spigot which is a 1/2" pex line.

My question is how to go about it. I will post some pictures so you can see what I am working with and hopefully follow along with me.:p

Ok so first off I have what I believe to be a 1.25" main which comes in the garage wall and is split into 2 lines, one is a 1" and one is a 3/4". They both run over the garage where the 3/4 was run into the water heater and the 1" was run and branched off for all the cold service. When I put the softener in I combined both these lines so that both hot and cold would be soft and as you can hopefully see from the pics I used 1" pex to run to and from the softener (which may have been a waste since the valve on the unit is only 3/4 I think.)

I have been debating two options:
1. Cut one of the lines and put another tee in and run off of that.
2. Separate these lines and just use the 3/4 line and just leave the 1" for the house.
I'm thinking if I separate them it shouldn't make any difference in the house pressure since it all has to go into 1" anyway. (Basically having the 3/4 tied in is redundant?)

Also I'm wondering if it would make any difference if I ran 3/4 back to the spigot vs. 1/2? I would rather use 1/2" because it's cheaper and easier to work with. The run will be about 40-50 feet. Will this make any difference in pressure? I can tell the difference when I use the front spigot, its a little higher.

So I just wanted to get some opinions and also see what you thought of my install. Since I'm gonna be up there again if theres anything I could/should do to make it any better.
Again I'm probably waaayy overthinking this but I only want to go up there once.

Thanks in advance!

IMG_2178 (Custom).jpg
Main entering house and splitting

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My combining job in the attic

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To and from the softener

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Another view

IMG_3067 (Custom).jpg
Has to run way back there
 

Jadnashua

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I'd T off the 1" supply line and run at least 3/4" pex to the hose bibs. The ID of pex is smaller than copper, and to approximate 1/2" copper, you'd want the 3/4" pex or you will decrease the flow. Typically, on a hose, you want the max flow available, but since the internals of the valve are typically similar, running larger than 3/4" pex probably won't buy you anything, but you'd notice the difference with 1/2" stuff.
 

Darkone

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But will doing that make a difference since I will have to reduce it down to 1/2 anyway? I have to make the connection in the attic, I'm not running it all the way to the bib since the wall is finished.
 

Hackney plumbing

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But will doing that make a difference since I will have to reduce it down to 1/2 anyway? I have to make the connection in the attic, I'm not running it all the way to the bib since the wall is finished.

Its really your choice. 1/2" would be fine but you will lose a bit of pressure do to the smaller pipe. When you lose pressure you also lose volume. Even tho you may choose to reduce a 3/4 line down to 1/2 at the hose bibb,you will have less pressure loss through the 3/4".

I would use 1/2" for my hose bibb if I had good pressure. I call good pressure 60-80 psi. Use the least amount of joints possible in the pex. Thats the key with pex. Its smaller I..d. is made up for by having to use less fittings. They really made too big of loops in the attic but its ok.
 

Darkone

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The big loops are my work:p I think I did it so I would have slack to secure it to a truss.

On that note, do you think I should just tee off one of the lines or should I separate the 3/4 and use it exclusivly for the hose and just have the remaining 1" line serving the interior of the home? I'm thinking I may actually improve flow since the way its set up now the water basically has a head-on collision at the tee. Can you actually flow enough water through the 1" pipe to justify having that 3/4 tied in?
 

Hackney plumbing

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The big loops are my work:p I think I did it so I would have slack to secure it to a truss.

On that note, do you think I should just tee off one of the lines or should I separate the 3/4 and use it exclusivly for the hose and just have the remaining 1" line serving the interior of the home? I'm thinking I may actually improve flow since the way its set up now the water basically has a head-on collision at the tee. Can you actually flow enough water through the 1" pipe to justify having that 3/4 tied in?

I think 1/2" will be fine if your pressure is around 6o psi or above and you have good flow now. No matter how you connect it to your existing. Your only going 60'
 

Darkone

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Ok sounds good!

In the previous post I was referring more about the flow into the softener and house. In one of the pics you can see the tee setup has two lines running right into each other. This was the only way I could think of to do this. But now I'm questioning if it is necessary to have both of these lines going into the softener? Can I run the whole house on just the 1" line?
 

Jadnashua

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Pipe size is often determined by first calculating the number of fixture units you want to supply. A certain sized pipe can supply up to a certain amount of fixture units. Off hand, I don't know which equates to what, but that info is readily available. Just add them up, then look at the chart, and see if the 1" is big enough.
 
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