Re: Low water pressure
Sir,
We have a 14 door apartment on a 3-storey building with roof deck. sadly we were not granted by manila water to have each unit an individual meter so, to cut the story short we have a mother meter and 14 sub meters. we are having problems with low pressure on the 2nd and 3rd floor during peak hours. we are planning on installing in our roof deck a 1000 gallons overhead storage tank with a booster pump at the ground floor, and supply it to the units using a gravity method. energy efficiency is our major concern, because we don't want our tenant to suffer high water cost.
p.s we had our entrance pipe changed from 15mm to 63mm, but our meter is still 15mm. we requested for a bigger meter but we were also not granted.
Thank you sir and hoping for your response.
Cheers
Sorry, what is your question you want me to respond to?
Let me also make sure I understand your configuration: Did you mean to say you have a booster pump right after the meter which pumps into your overhead tank (I assume at the roofdeck) and you you want to supply all floors by gravity from this tank?
Re: Low water pressure
Let me try to understand this clearly.
You say the supply pipe was upgraded to "63mm Ø" but the meter
itself is "15mm Ø" (did you mean to say 13mm Ø) ?
What exactly do you mean by "supply pipe"?
Do you mean the service line from the street to your meter? It's
pretty weird that the utility would upsize THAT without also
upgrading the meter (just think about all of the reducers that the
installer would have to use, going from 2.5" pipe to a small meter).
Or do you mean that you unilaterally upsized the pipe leading from
the meter into your property? Doing that isn't going to help much
because the service pipe remains as narrow as it is, and thus the
amount of water coming-in remains the same. Also, upsizing the
pipe FROM the meter into your property reduces ACTUAL incoming
pressure.
A booster pump, drawing from a cistern (because sucking straight
from the pipe is both illegal and a recipe for contaminated water) to
fill an overhead (gravity downfeed) tank, can remedy for low water
pressure in the street: since you're boosting what is low pressure.
However it's not a remedy for a service pipe too narrow to meet your
consumption (good pressure, but insufficient volume), and you may
find your overhead tank running dry very, very frequently, and the
pump running hard.
Your service pipe diameter (and from there, your meter size --their
nominal diameters are not the same) was determined when you
first applied for service, the utility estimating your monthly water
consumption in terms of cubic meters. If your consumption exceeds
supply, you now simply have to reapply for service, showing proof
of increased consumption, and the utility will assign you a bigger
service pipe and thus a bigger mother meter. It will also charge you
more according to meter-reflected consumption, as well as for meter
servicing charges.
Re: Low water pressure
In addition, assuming you have enough water in the overhead tank, note that if the overhead tank is sitting on the roof deck itself, your top floors will naturally be low pressure (pressure increases as you get further down so top floor is very low pressure while bottom floor will have high pressure) and really might be insufficient for use during peak demand.
They have these small, cheap circulating pumps with auto on/off that can be easily installed inline along the pipe. Alternatively, peripheral pumps are more powerful than the circulating pumps... costs more than the circulating but still cheaper than the jet pumps. But with peripheral pumps, you will need a pressure tank with pressure switch to control it. Both these would help and are available in most chain hardware stores.
Alternatively, raise the overhead tank higher will also help (and avoid the use of additional pumps)
