How do you work out what your water pressure is?

We can work out the flow rate, I know the pipe diameter, but how do I convert that to kpa? I need to work out what shower I need to buy.

Gidday

Do you have pumped water or is it just gravity.

The house has a header tank, but we are not going to take it from that as the water pressure is dire. Instead it will be taken direct from the bore.

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If you were closer you could have borrowed our flow meter [] but as you aren't try this......
.......take a measured container, eg 10lt bucket, place below tap, have a second timer ready and put the cold tap on full.
The amount in the bucket by the time taken to fill will give you your flow rate.
Do this for the hot tap also, this will let you know if you are "equal pressure".
Good luck.

thanks, the flow rate I know, it is working out the pressure. I need to know if taking it straight from the bore gives us enough pressure to buy a mains pressure shower which is a lot cheaper than a low pressure one.
There will be no hot tank as the hotwater will be a gas instant hot water one.

Would have helped if I had read the post []

Apart from going to your plumbing merchant and buying a gauge for a few dollars I can only suggest have a browse around in here.
Bernoulli's principal is here
Good luck :confused:

Hi,

You can't work it out, you have to measure it.

You need a pressure gauge, like this:

www.plumbworld.co.uk/pressure-gauges-226-0000

and then you hook it up like this:

www.ehow.com/how_4969221_measure-water-pressure.html

Perhaps you could call a friendly plumber who would measure it, or lend you a gauge?

A

hmm. This might sound thick, but would the pressure guage already on the pump just give me that information, it looks suspiciously similar

Hi Moggy,

Have you spoken to anyone about using it direct from the bore? I've heard from our pump guy and from a few others who have met the problem, that running your water direct from the bore pump (ie: turning it on and off all the time) will uin your bore pump. I would seek advice from someone. Bore pumps are expensive and a little difficult to replace.

This is the guy we used to deal with, we've always been happy with him and he's dealt with pumps on 2 different blocks for us in the past. Maybe you coudl just ask?

yellow.co.nz/companies/Pumping-Equipment.../101591861_1364.html

Well I don't think running it from the bore will be any more of a problem than it already is - the water filter runs straight from it as does all the irrigation, one more shower is not going to make much difference and changing it all over would be mega bucks and a lot of work. The campsite when it gets going will have its own storage tank as it needs water even when there is no power so that won't be straight from it.

The water pressure from the header tank is horrendously low, so using it is not really an option as we hate the shower in the house for that reason.

Moggy, my twopence worth. The pressure gauge on the bore pump is a pretty good indicator. Remember that as the head height between the pump & shower increases then the pressure at the shower will drop. I assume your bore pump is set up to pump into a (large) water pressure cylinder and from there to the various irrigation points etc.
If it is then all is just fine. If not you can purchase a pressure cylinder. I am happy to give you more info on that if you require it.

The next thing is running the pipe from the pressure cylinder (pump) to the gas heater. My best advice (because I've done it to suit my situation) is to use a larger size alkathene pipe than what everyone else will recommend. Use at least a 25mm pipe. The extra cost is insignificant in the greater scheme of things. Now when the plumber does his thing between the gas heater & shower, insist on a minimum of 20mm pipe. The plumber will resist but if he uses anything less in my opinion you will not enjoy your shower.

Now 10psi is approximately 70kpa. In all probability you already have plenty of pressure in the system to achieve what you want.

We have low pressure showers and they are good, maybe that needs looking into, put bigger pipe from tank to shower/more pressure at shower head

The pipe which goes past the sleepout is 25mm, so that is fortunate.
If a remember correctly the pressure on the pressure guage is around 45psi, (have to check this evening) which would put it in the mains pressure category. When we got a new pump we asked for a more powerful one than the previous one

Next question what is the difference physically in a high and low pressure mixer?

right, checked the pressure guage on the pump - it cuts in a 50 psi and off at 60psi which is 345 - 414 kpa which according to the packaging on a shower mixer, mains pressure is 300kpa and above so it looks like we have mains pressure from the bore. Glad we didn't spend extra money on a low pressure