Hardly flushing.

[RokinRandy]

Hello plumbers.

This one has me scratching my head. Have a toilet in a hospital hardly getting a flush. Has a one inch water line from a 2 inch. Big hospital. Have to flush several times to get it down. Ran a snake through it. But it seems like a water pressure issue. Rebuilt the flushometer. Hmm. Everything else around here is fine. But there’s a few toilets around here that behave this way. As if it’s not getting the volume.

Well could be an engineering issue. But still this has to be fixed. Building has 2 points of entry which is also weird. At both points it is 63 psi of pressure That is plenty of pressure.

So I wonder what can be done to improve the flush ?

 

[Reach4]

If you could temporarily tee off to a pressure gauge in that supply line near the toilet, it could tell the story. You would need to watch the gauge during a flush.

If for some reason, there is a lot of pressure drop during the flush, you could work around that. I think you could tee off nearby to maybe a 10 gallon pressure tank. WX-104 is 15 inch diameter and 18 inch tall. 1 inch FIP connection. I think adding a check valve before that would be good. We could discuss that.

So it takes space you may not have available. This would only be if you cannot provide a proper flow due to a piping issue that you cannot overcome.

When there is 0 gpm flow, there is no pressure drop, even thru 1/4 inch pipe (assuming constant altitude). Add some gpm, and there is significant dynamic pressure drop.

So maybe if this is a recurring thing, you could make a test fixture with a pressure gauge. Maybe also have a pressure tank. This would let you identify if the problem is the toilet or piping.

Anyway, when you flush, there would be about 2.5 gallons of water at a high gpm available.