Low rate of water flow (cold)

[dpm_dpmartin]

Hi,

The flow rates of the kitchen (ground floor), bathroom (first floor) and other bathroom (second floor) are all the same (or seem to be)... little flow with fully cold and what I'd class as an acceptable flow when fully turned to hot.

Boiler is situated on the first floor.

So, no, I've definitely not checked everything, but I think the Central Heating Engineer and the things I've been advised on this forum have kinda got me to the end of what I can do... I'm going to allow Yorkshire Water to do their thing now (their scheduled visit will be at no charge).

 

[dpm_dpmartin]

Yorkshire Water visited today.

They measured "first tap" in the two adjoining properties - 9 litres per minute in my home and 4 litres per minute in next door.

He has raised two jobs to do a flow and pressure test at the boundary. He'd said they'd try to get them done within a week.

He had a look at the outside stop-taps but said he, himself, couldn't do any testing there. He also looked, briefly, at the water meter and said he could not do any testing there for insurance reasons and the risk of flooding the house.

 

[dpm_dpmartin]

Morrisons came on behalf of Yorkshire Water today.

Their conclusion for next door is that "it should have improved". They did the boundary test and said that they "were getting nothing" then when they opened it up "full bore" it "went up to 40 litres per minute", so they think there might have been a blockage.

I'm quoting their technical terms verbatim above.

I've not been able to test it yet as I now have Tenants in that property and they were out, so we'll find out later if there's an improvement.

Morrisons said that it was OK to test later because if it's tested it and it improves then that's good, but if it's tested it and it didn't improve then they wouldn't be doing anything else anyway.

What they also said was, if it doesn't improve immediately, then I should turn the internal stop-tap off and then on again. Not sure why this would help but it's what I was told.

They also did a test at my house - the result afterwards is that my water flow appears to be much the same as it was before, but all they did there was a test that seemed to pump a lot of water down the driveway. My house was not my major concern, to be fair.

They said they will report back to Yorkshire Water that both properties passed.

Fingers are crossed.

 

[dpm_dpmartin]

No bloody difference at the kitchen tap!

Nothing at all.

From Morrisons saying they had "nothing" at the external stop-tap and then it going to "40 litres per minute" (they reported 35 back to Yorkshire Water) it's had zilch effect on the tap.

I can't believe it. I had gotten my hopes up but when the Tenants returned from work they came straight around and said - "we don't have any water now" - turns out Morrisons had left the external stop-tap they'd upgraded turned off. We opened that up fully and the tap is the same.

Yorkshire Water phoned me up today and said - "it's nothing to do with us any more"... but I persisted on the idea of the meter possibly being faulty.

They have told me that they are going to try something special - they are coming around later today (apparently before 19:00) and they are going to do a) a blow-back test and b) (if needed) a meter replacement... all in one visit, which they don't normally do according to them.

I am so hopeful this gets resolved.

If there's 35 litres per minute at the external stop-tap, it's only 5 metres to where the internal stop-tap is (no-one's measured anything there yet) and then another 4 metres or so (in a straight line) to where the kitchen tap is and that's down at 2 litres per minute, although Yorkshire Water measured 4.

And time marches on... it's not a way to live, trying to have a shower when the water doesn't even fall out of the shower head, but tries to hold on up there for dear life.

 

[dpm_dpmartin]

Fixed! There's no meter located in there now, so free water (I think), and the flow is back up.

 

[Agile]

Until they send someone round to replace the meter!

And bill someone on the previous average consumption.

Tony

 

[dpm_dpmartin]

A new meter will go in at some point, yes.

The meter read "4" yesterday, so I don't think they've got much to go on and I don't think the bill payer should be penalised for something that was obviously broken which they were clearly responsible for.

All said, Yorkshire Water have been good... they didn't want to come back out after the boundary test passed, but it's a good thing that they did.