Things were fine in the shower, good flow and pressure. I replaced the shower head with a different one. After this, intermittently the pressure would be terrible - almost just a trickle and not a complete stream pattern. I went back to the original shower head and it's doing the same thing. It's in the boys bathroom, and whenever they remember to complain and I go in and it works fine. When I am out on the road, SWMBO (who helped change a Suburban fuel pump, so she's ok) reports that 4 out of 5 days it's bad. I told her that the next time this happens to unscrew the shower head and see what happens. Any guesses?
If that is the only shower affected, remove the shower head completely and run the water out of the open pipe. You should have plenty of water flow with no shower head on there. If you have plenty of water and no surging of pressure then the problem is in the head unit(s).
If you are on a well and get surging of water pressure then I would check the pressure tank, although that should affect every faucet in the house.
EastCoastMojo wrote:
If that is the only shower affected, remove the shower head completely and run the water out of the open pipe. You should have plenty of water flow with no shower head on there. If you have plenty of water and no surging of pressure then the problem is in the head unit(s).
If you are on a well and get surging of water pressure then I would check the pressure tank, although that should affect every faucet in the house.
Sounds correct. It may be that the surging may be happening at the other faucets but not noticed like it is in the shower.
glueguy wrote:
Things were fine in the shower, good flow and pressure.
Is this what is known as sexting?
EastCoastMojo wrote:
If that is the only shower affected, remove the shower head completely and run the water out of the open pipe. You should have plenty of water flow with no shower head on there. If you have plenty of water and no surging of pressure then the problem is in the head unit(s).
If you are on a well and get surging of water pressure then I would check the pressure tank, although that should affect every faucet in the house.
+1 to this... If it is the shower heads you can fix them. There is likely some sort of E36 M3 stuck somewhere in them. Try flushing them by reversing the water flow and if your shower head offers different settings switch between them. It may be tedious but it beats paying for a new shower head. It may just be some rust or teflon tape stuck in there.
To reverse the flow, just bring it outside to a hose turn the hose on full blast. No attachments needed. put the hose up to the nozzle and spray it thru the holes that normally spray you. If this doesn't work, soak the heads in some CLR overnight, that should work..
RossD
PowerDork
8/13/13 9:29 a.m.
Is the shower head the highest fixture in the house? Is your wife doing laundry/dishwasher when the shower is in use? Well or city water?
Pressure balance faucet with berkeleyed up internal bits?
Datsun1500 wrote:
You need to pull the head and see if it happens without it. If it's OK, its the head (don't know how 2 went bad).
If two went bad, bad heads are more likely a symptom not the problem. At least if bad = gunked up.
If it is the shower head, I have had good luck soaking them in CLR. We get mineral deposits pretty badly and we are on a well.
We're on city water so no well. I'll remove the shower head and see what happens next time we get a trickle.
Any chance there is a scald guard built into the valve assembly? Then the issue my be operator error more than anything.
