How to fix slow water pressure in shower/bathub?

[ruanddu]

I saw your video for repair slow water flow in a kitchen sink. It was great, however, I am curious how to fix slow water pressure in a bathtub/shower? I am not sure how old the pipes are. The house was built in 1925 and we have only been there for two years. It\\\'s hard to say how old the pipes are. Please let me know if you have any recommendations.

Thanks,
Josh

[dominick]

The list is endless, lol.. OK first how is the pressure in the rest of the house. You see you have two things you need to have, one being pressure and the other, volume. These are two totally different things. Pressure of course is just how much pressure you have. You can have 50 psi in a straw but try filling a bath tub up with that, right.. Now volume is what we really want here. 3 psi from a fire hose will fill your tub up in no time at all.

So what we want is a nice amount of pressure and good volume. In order to get the volume we need to look for blockages, if you hard water there could be a blockage somewhere..

So the first thing you want to do is unscrew your shower head and turn the water on, and take note how well it comes out, or not. How are the nearby faucets. Or is it just the shower ?


Please get back to me..

Regards... Dominick

[ruanddu]

Thanks so much for getting back to me Dominick. I will try your shower recommendation.

As far as the sink faucet, it seems normally to come out pretty good comparatively. However, I am not sure what\\\'s it really supposed to look like. Lately, on another note, the sink faucet has been making a weird sound and the water coming out a bit strange as in low volume and shooting out at an angle. If I press the screen in it comes out better for a while and then reverts back. This a new thing and I don\\\'t believe it\\\'s related to the tub, as the tub has always been troublesome. Don\\\'t know if you have any advice here as well?

The shower and tub seem to have a low volume of water coming out as well as little pressure. Anything else you recommend trying?

Thanks much,
Josh

[dominick]

Hummmm, the aerator / screen on your sink sounds like it\\\'s clogged or close to it. Remove and clean that and you should notice a nice improvement. Do you have over tubs in the house ? if so who do they compare to each other.

One thing you can do, is measure the amount of water you get out of you tub, is place a nice size bucket or pot in there and see how long it takes to fill up, also take notice of any foreign material in the bucket.

But the big question is still, how is the rest of the house or is it just the bathroom. Very important, do you have a well or on you on city water ?

[ruanddu]

Dominick,

The bathroom sink doesn\\\'t have a twist cap that holds in the screen. Is it best just to pry out the screen with a flat screw driver or some other tool?

The tub is the only one in the house. The rest of the sinks seem ok, not as good as a new house, but not too bad. We are on city water. I will try your recommendation for filling a tub of water up. How long should it take to be efficient?

Lastly, I noticed you used a wire to clean the tub drain in your video. I don\\\'t have any wire. Is there anything cheap I could buy in replacement that might work even better? How about the drain claw?

Thanks so much!!!
Josh

[dominick]

The wire I used in that video is just regular house wire #12.
You should be able to fill a nice size bucket up in I would say no more then 100 seconds.

Since you have a very old house your pipes COULD be somewhat clogged up.
Since you\\\'re on city water I would give them a call and tell them that you have very low pressure. They should be able to come out and put a gauge on and see if you have what they say you should have. This would be the easiest and cheapest way to start off. Chances are you have the old steal pipes and over time can collect with lots of build up..

[ruanddu]

Dominick,

I tried your wire method with the hook at the end for unclogging the bathtub. I got some hair out but it\\\'s still clogged badly. I haven\\\'t tried the overflow yet, as there is a screen that covers it. It appears to be glued on, not screwed on? Any recommendations on how to get that screen cover off the overflow? Or, any other tips for cleaning out the drain?

Thanks for your time,
Josh

[dominick]

As far as the over flow goes, I wouldn\\\'t worry to much about that for being clogged. The wire trick is good for hair and what ever close to the drain. But getting it around the trap could be very hard. I would say the best thing to use would be a small snake if you have one. If not you can even buy one from say Home Depot for a few bucks.

[ruanddu]

I went to Depot yesterday and they had a few products but the cheapest was a $15.00 snake. I have been trying to find a product called the drain claw, as it seems to work great according to this short video on youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2kol-Pwv6w What are your thoughts on that? If your recommendation doesn\\\'t work with the snake, do you think the next step would be to remove the drain trap from the crawl space?

Thanks again!
Josh

[dominick]

I never heard of the \\\"claw\\\" but seems like a nice little tool. But as far as removing the overflow like they did in that video would not be a good idea. The reason being is, most times when you disconnect the cover you could loose the pipe in the wall, or worst yet it disconnect from the bottom T.. Really just a dumb idea they showed in the video.

But hey if you can get to trap in a crawl space by all means remove and clean that baby out. But if you had a snake I would try that first.

The drain claw seams to made out of a stiffer wire then I showed in my video.
The one bad thing out snakes or anything stiffer then the wire I used is that if you start pushing to hard you could pull your trap apart. unlikely but could happen.