Low pressure?

Hello.
I recently had a sentiment filter and an acid nutralizer installed in my house. The problem is my water pessure has gone down. I can barley run a shower and flush a toilet at the same time.
I live in New England and I have an 8 year old deep well with a submersible pump. the pump goes to a pressure tank and then the filter and nutralizer. I can shut the valve to the nutralizer and filter off thus diverting the water aound them and the pressure is fine. My question is what options do I have to increase my water pressure. Any suggestions would be great.

 

First things first.....

Is the sediment filter clogged?...Is there a replaceable screen, or some means of cleaning and maintenance? If pressure is good without the filter in the loop, it's fair to assume your system is capable of functioning properly.

 

Thanks for the reply. Yes the filter does have a cartridge that can be replaced. It has only been on for less than 6 weeks so I figured the low pressure was just a byproduct of having the filter on. I didn't know if there was some kind of pressure increaser I could install?
Thanks

 

Question is, did you have low pressure from the beginning (installation of the filter) or is this something recent?

 

Hello bmarinjr-

I need to take care of a low ph problem myself and started looking into acid neutralizers vs. chemical pumps (pumps only because my ph is really low- 5.5).

I am brand new to all this neutralizers stuff so beware. But if you have a acid-neutralizer then I think the water passes through granular material in the tank to fix the ph problem. You can either have a downflow system where the water passes down through the filter material and continues on, or you can have an upflow system where the water passes up through the material and continues on.

The downflow causes (or can cause) the material to eventually cake in the bottom of the tank . This is solved by a periodic backflow or backwash where water is forced up through the material in the reverse direction to the normal flow and is drained out. This loosens and cleans the material. As far as I can tell some of these downflow systems have an automatic backflow feature so that the homeowner just attaches the tank to a drain and the system periodically and automatically backwashes itself. But I think some systems are manual and the homeowner needs to take some action to backwash.

But what I thought I found (and I’m sorry I lost my references ), was that some MANUFACTURERS ARE UNDERSTATING THE GPM needed to adequately backwash their system and some homeowners have a water flow rate too low for a good backwash. Thus the system eventually cakes up and causes pressure problems. I think I heard even that the upflow systems can cake up if the house water flow rate is too low to begin with.

But sounds like your system is pretty new, and I haven’t the slightest idea how long this “cake up” problem takes and thus whether or not it could have anything at all to do with your pressure problem.

(By the way, sorry again, I think actually the industry uses the term “cementing” and not “cake up”).

Also, I think if you find the manufacturer and model of the neutralizer you should be able to get the specs online. They should tell you the steady-state GPM that the neutralizer is made to handle. I believe that if the GPM from your well is much higher than that specified for the neutralizer – you would in fact see a significant pressure drop at the fixtures after the unit is installed. Could it be that the installer incorrectly sized the unit? But as I said, I’m new to all of this and in the learning mode myself - so take all the above with a grain of salt.

Good luck!

 

Thank you for the helpful replies!
I changed the filter and the pressure did go back to "normal" for the most part. I didn't really see much in the filter and I am not sure how long it will last as it was only about a month old. My acid nutralizer is just a tank that you fill halfway with the calcite. It says that it needs only 5 GPM. The plumber installed the nutralizer before the filter. So it seemed that the filter was mostly full of the calcite from the nutralizer. I guess I will just need to plan on changing the filter monthly to maintain my current water pressure.
I just thought there might be some kind of secondary pump or pressure increasing devise that I could put on that would increase my pressure. Even before the instalation of the filter my pressure was satisfactory but not great.
Thanks for all the help and suggestions!