American plumbing – can you tell me…

[beet1e]

These flight sim games are played by a diversity of people, so I’m confident we have an American plumber in our midst who can answer my query  

This Christmas I went to visit an English friend of mine, Mark, who lives in Scottsdale,AZ. We always joke about the state of English plumbing – the pseudo mixer taps with parallel hot and cold streams of water; the way the shower goes from warm to scalding if someone flushes the bog – that kind of thing.

Mark’s house is on three levels. The first floor just has the garage, which contains the hot water tank and the washer and dryer. The second floor has the third bedroom, a bathroom with shower, dining area, kitchen area and living room area. The third floor has the two main bedrooms which both have en suite bathrooms.

One time, Mark was using his shower just as I was about to use mine. Being British, I paused for a moment, wondering whether the plumbing would be able to cope with the demand of two showers on the third floor being run simultaneously. Then I remembered I was in America, which has superior plumbing, and went ahead. There was no problem at all! Both showers deliver water at a good pressure and an adequate and consistent temperature.

In Britain, had Mark suddenly turned on a hot tap (faucet), my shower may have run cold! By law, we are stuck with a system by which a cold water tank is stored in the roof somewhere, and provides water at instant demand, and refills at its leisure. The problem is that the hot water pressure in British homes always seems to suffer.

In Mark’s garage, I noticed a pipe with what looked like an electric pump mounted inline. Does the American plumbing system allow for water to be force fed to where its needed, instead of our own gravity based system?

[Swoop]

In 1982 my parents fitted a power shower.  No more cold showers when someone flushes the bog.

Havnt lived in a place since that has suffered this problem.  Where ya from beet1e?

 
(London to Bristol area)

[Karnak]

Every shower in every building I have lived in has always suffered from that problem.  Somebody turns on the cold water in the kitchen and suddenly my shower is scalding, freezing if they turned on the hot.

This is all here in the USA.  Where are these mythical showers that maintain a constant tempature again?

[ 12-30-2001: Message edited by: Karnak ]

[fdiron]

The showers in my house dont get hotter or colder when people use the water.  The only problem I have is water pressure.  My house is so far back from the road that the water pressure is greatly reduced by the time it gets to the house.

[mrsid2]

We finns know how to build plumbing, I have only read from problems like yours. You should come here shopping.

A decent plumbing system requires the hot water source connected to the central heating of the house which gives it more than adequate horsepower to produce heat for the whole house. Combined with a powerful pump and membrane-pressure container it will give you a constant water pressure and enough warm water to provide all watertaps in the whole building.

The downside is you need to burn oil / electricity in the central heating also during summertime, you just cut the central heating pump off so the radiators won't heat up.

In appartment buildings the plumbing system is even more massive because they are linked to the communal water system which gives pressure from high-altitude water containers which are used to store water higher than the buildings. That enables pumping water at nighttime to the storage and use the stored pressure during daytime. The water is then warmed in a container linked to the communal transit-heat system which takes (waste) power from industrial factories or specially built heating power plants that provide heat to the section of the city in question.

Needless to say we don't have to worry if or not we get hot water from the tap. It's 'factory guaranteed.'

[capt. apathy]

i'm not a plumber but i've redone the plumbing in alot of houses and i don't think i've ever seen a pump on any(except motor homes).
 in most areas of the US you don't have your own presure tank (except sky scrapers)the presure on the main is usually more thna enough to keep the whole house at good presure (unless your house has been remodled and you've added more showers, sinks, and toilets than the main was designed to suport)

[Eagler]

when I redid the master bedroom bath, the faucet I installed had some gizmo in it that prevent the hot/cold water change. works well.
as for pressure, I think that's a case by case basis. city or well, sprinklers on, doing wash, shape/age of pipes, many factors..

when I lived in England as a kid I remember the tank for the toliet being overhead with this pull chain thingy, talk about gravity fed   Never have seen one of those since ..

[Udie]

I design plumbing lines at work   well outside the house.  All water lines run under pressure.  Gravity is used for this, but there are also lift (pump) stations that add pressure to the line when needed.  Water mains are huge 30", 48" and larger  then we tap off of those with a 12" or 10" line to supply an apartment building. From the 12" or 10" line you tap into the houses or apartments with a 1 1/2" or 2" line then down to 1/2" or 1/4" for the house plumbing. There are "vent stacks" that pertrude through the roof that act as a carborator and allow air into the system to keep it from siezing up.  Sizes of all the pipes can vary too.  I've lived in the type of house you described above, and it sucked having to listen for the flush so you'd know when to flatten up against the wall    

 Houses built after the 60's don't seem to suffer from these problems.