The Pressure is Back

There is more information about my daughter’s vision but as none of it is urgent, I thought I’d take a day off and talk about something else, something mundane, something like water pressure.

My husband and I have had a water mystery ongoing in our house for some time now.   In retrospect it was fairly straightforward, but the order in which events occurred and things were changed caused the facts to be misleading and we were tracking down a problem that wasn’t the problem we thought it was.

We moved into our house in 2010 and at some point in the first year or so bumped up the water pressure in the house higher than average because it was nice getting water faster and harder when you wanted it.

Things went well and without incident for a number of years until we had our annual plumbing wellness check done.   A very thorough technician told us somehow the water pressure was at 120 PSI, or city full pressure.   This was bad, this wouldn’t do, we were going to blow things out if we kept it at that pressure.

So he dropped the pressure.    We also decided to put in a whole house water conditioner at the time because technology had advanced where the system was much less expensive and the consumable cartridges were long-lived and low-cost.   House water now cleaner and milder pressure-wise we also de-scaled the on-demand hot water heaters and ultimately got an imaginary certificate of healthy water and pipes from our plumbing company.

It was after that that things get muddled.   That lower pressure turned out to be potentially nice for the pipes but annoyingly slow for everything else involving humans.   My husband got a pressure gauge a few months later and over the course of the next year we futzed with the pressure, increasing it, worrying about it being too high, etc.

At one point recently we wondered if we had a leak somewhere because the pressure was dropping to very low when there was, say, a faucet on and a toilet flushing.  It was about a week later that my husband was testing pressure with the gauge on the hose bib outside, watching it drop to 30PSI just because one faucet was one when he had an idea…how long did that whole house water conditioner filter last?   I told him I thought it was a five year filter.

He checked and no, that five year filter is for the ice maker, the one for the whole house, incidentally installed just over a year ago, was due to be changed—probably had been needing to be changed for two months.     Today the new filter came in and as it turns out, we didn’t have a pressure problem at all.

We ordered two filters so next year when I start complaining about how long it takes to fill the tub up, my husband will be able to fix the issue over lunch.

The Big Boy Update:  Sometimes on the way to school we’ll play Simon Says.   Today my son changed the game to Batman Says.   He would try to trick us by saying things like, “Robin says…” or “Alfred says…”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We were waiting to board the plane yesterday when my daughter said something to me and I have absolutely no idea where she got it from, “mom, when are we going to sit down?  My bunions are sore.”