TheBigYahi
New Member
We recently had a conditioning system installed and have been noticing excessive pressure drop since. We are on city water with a hardness of 10 gpg. The system is: 3/4” Meter -> 30' 3/4” copper pipe -> 9x40 GAC non-backwashing downflow filter -> Autotrol 255/760 8x44 with 1 cu-ft resin -> 3/4” supply trunk.
Any use in the house during a shower now (2 gpm) is causing the shower to droop. I ran a bunch of tests using a simple pressure gauge at various places around the house. Using our basement sink on full as a reference (softened, 5.5 gpm measured at the meter) I took readings at the garage spigot (softened) and an unsoftened spigot just after the water meter. At the meter spigot the pressure dropped from 65 psi static to 56 psi at 5.5 gpm. At the garage spigot it dropped from 64 psi static to 24 psi at 5.5 gpm. If I’m not mistaken that represents 31 psi of pressure loss through the conditioning system and roughly 45' of 3/4" pipe at 5.5 gpm. The pressure drop specification for the AutoTrol 255-760-075-844 is 8 psi at 6 gpm. Our system is operating well in excess of that. As a sanity check I also measured the pressure at the meter spigot when drawing 5.5 gpm from the front outside spigot (unsoftened) and the pressure only dropped from 65 psi to 56 psi, consistent with my other measurement.
Now that's just a test to illustrate the problem. I'm concerned because our dealer sold us that we would be able to run 2 showers and another water appliance simultaneously, up to 6 gpm rated and 7.5 gpm peak. That's obviously not the case as in real-life conditions I see a 20+ psi drop with a single 2 gpm shower and a 2 gpm toilet flush. That's enough to get us way below 30 psi at our 2nd floor shower heads and the water is barely trickling out.
A big caveat to add here is that I tried putting both the GAC filter and the softener into bypass with only a 4 psi improvement with the same 5.5 gpm load. Perhaps there's another problem in the install somewhere?
Am I expecting too much of this system? Were my measurements reasonable to determine there's something up? Our overall water usage alone isn't enough to require a larger system (regens every 14-17 days currently), but our peak demand is pushing it. We're about to get a new custom shower and I expect up to 4.5 gpm from that shower plus 2 gpm from the kid's bathroom which pushes us right up against the specified service flow rate for the softener.
I have an email out to my dealer with much of this same information but his communication on this subject has been....limited to say the least. Any advice on other things to consider?
Any use in the house during a shower now (2 gpm) is causing the shower to droop. I ran a bunch of tests using a simple pressure gauge at various places around the house. Using our basement sink on full as a reference (softened, 5.5 gpm measured at the meter) I took readings at the garage spigot (softened) and an unsoftened spigot just after the water meter. At the meter spigot the pressure dropped from 65 psi static to 56 psi at 5.5 gpm. At the garage spigot it dropped from 64 psi static to 24 psi at 5.5 gpm. If I’m not mistaken that represents 31 psi of pressure loss through the conditioning system and roughly 45' of 3/4" pipe at 5.5 gpm. The pressure drop specification for the AutoTrol 255-760-075-844 is 8 psi at 6 gpm. Our system is operating well in excess of that. As a sanity check I also measured the pressure at the meter spigot when drawing 5.5 gpm from the front outside spigot (unsoftened) and the pressure only dropped from 65 psi to 56 psi, consistent with my other measurement.
Now that's just a test to illustrate the problem. I'm concerned because our dealer sold us that we would be able to run 2 showers and another water appliance simultaneously, up to 6 gpm rated and 7.5 gpm peak. That's obviously not the case as in real-life conditions I see a 20+ psi drop with a single 2 gpm shower and a 2 gpm toilet flush. That's enough to get us way below 30 psi at our 2nd floor shower heads and the water is barely trickling out.
A big caveat to add here is that I tried putting both the GAC filter and the softener into bypass with only a 4 psi improvement with the same 5.5 gpm load. Perhaps there's another problem in the install somewhere?
Am I expecting too much of this system? Were my measurements reasonable to determine there's something up? Our overall water usage alone isn't enough to require a larger system (regens every 14-17 days currently), but our peak demand is pushing it. We're about to get a new custom shower and I expect up to 4.5 gpm from that shower plus 2 gpm from the kid's bathroom which pushes us right up against the specified service flow rate for the softener.
I have an email out to my dealer with much of this same information but his communication on this subject has been....limited to say the least. Any advice on other things to consider?