Little or no water

dreamers75

Hopefully someone can give us some info to my issue (Plumber due today, altho its 5pm so unlikely)

Last few weeks our water pressure been dropping off on the downstairs cold tap, 2 weeks ago its started effecting hot and cold and upstairs taps too and then the most important item, the shower.

Rang plumber and he asked me to check the tank, it looks fine? I guess. It has water and seems to fill up?

Then to call irish Water, they came out and said no issue with water going into the house. Whatever the issue is its internal.

Atm it would take about 5 minutes to fill a kettle and the hot water is nonexistent.

Any ideas? Anyone? My kids need showers 😁

Thanks

Wearb

I'd guess that you do need a plumber and not something that you could fix yourself. So keep on to the plumber.

the_amazing_raisin

Usually the kitchen tap is fed from mains water as it's the drinking water source

So start with that, is the pressure generally good? It might drop down a bit during the day as other houses are using water but it shouldn't have a weak flow

Assuming that's good, then the other taps/toilets/showers will be fed by the attic tank. If the mains pressure is low then the tank might have trouble filling and this would affect the pressure at the taps

The tank should be regularly filling until the float on the inlet stops the flow. If the pressure is weak it might be filling constantly or intermittently

There's usually a pressure reducing valve on the mains water supply. This is to stop the mains pressure being so strong. These sometimes need adjusting if the flow is too low

Another issue might be something draining the water from the tank constantly. A leaky tap or a toilet which is constantly draining could do this so check for these

If the attic tank is drained then it will create air locks in the pipes which will reduce or stop the flow. You might notice bad pressure and the taps spitting water and making a sort of gurgling/rattling sounds. There's a few tricks to get rid of these, a quick Google can help.

One I've found that can work is if you have a hot/cold mixer tap, set it in the middle (hot+cold) and wrap a towel tightly around the spout. Hopefully you'll force some hot water back up the cold pipe and blow any air into the attic tank

Finally it's worth looking in the attic tank to see if there's anything blocking the outflow pipes. They're supposed to have lids but I know older ones didn't always have that. It's possible something fell into the tank and blocked a pipe

the_amazing_raisin

Actually since you mentioned it take a long time to fill a kettle then I'm guessing you're filling it from the mains (kitchen) tap?

That sounds like poor mains pressure, which would start to affect other things

Since Irish Water said it's fine, I'd definitely look at the pressure reducing valve

Also, there should be a water shut-off valve somewhere in the house. Possibly under the kitchen sink, or utility room or hot press. It generally looks a bit like a garden tap fitting on a pipe.

Make sure that's all the way open, then give it a little 1/8th turn towards closed (they can seize if there all the way open or closed)

If the mechanism is stiff try a bit of WD40 or something to loosen it, but don't force it. If you break it and create a leak the only shutoff is in the water meter in the street