Low Flow Sillcock


  #1  
Old 11-13-19, 02:50 PM
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Low Flow Sillcock

I have a Woodford (10 yrs old) that flows less than 4 gpm. It is fed by a 40 ft straight run of 1/2" copper, with one compression repair coupling in the middle. My other sillcock is also fed with 1/2" copper, but closer to the 3/4' line feeding the house and delivers over 6 gpm. Can that long 1/2" copper run cost me that much flow? If I replaced it, I would go with 3/4" PEX and reduce at the sillcock.
 
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Old 11-13-19, 03:20 PM
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I've found Woodford's to have good flow so I would suspect something in the plumbing. There are calculators and tables available online to figure how much flow you loose to pipe size and fittings. Things like 90 degree fittings have a surprisingly big hit on flow.
 
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Old 11-13-19, 04:35 PM
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1/2" has almost exactly 1/2 the flow of 3/4"
 
  #4  
Old 08-09-20, 12:52 PM
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Low Flow Sillcock

I posted on this a while back and am just following up on finally experimenting with it today. I found that my hose reel with 75 ft of hose is at least part of the culprit. With only about 15 ft of hose unreeled, it took 58 seconds to run 5 gallons. Next I disconnected the feeder hose from the reel and filled the bucket in 42 seconds. Upon unreeling the entire hose, I found a significant kink where it connects to the reel. Further, the first row of hose coils on the reel are flattened into oval. The net is that the reel and its problems are reducing flow almost 30%.

Now I repeated the experiment with a different sillcock and using just the reel feeder hose, it filled the bucket in 27 seconds. So my slow flow delivers only 63% as much as the second one. They are identical Woodfords except the better one is so old as not to have anti-siphon. The better one is supplied by 12 ft of 1/2" copper vs 40 ft to the slower one. Can I be losing that much flow with extra tubing with a couple ells?
 
 

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