new Delta faucet, water flow

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powerdog

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I'm considering a Delta kitchen faucet that claims to offer 1.8 GPM based on 60 PSI.

The pressure where our outside pipe (from a drilled well) enters the house is 44 PSI.

Will this lower pressure have a significant impact on the flow of water from the faucet?

Thank you.
 
Hi Dog, my own experience with all kinds of faucets and well-powered water supply is that the "feel"--which is both a mix of pressure and volume--is pretty awful.

Two things you can do--first if you have a Well X-Trol pressure tank or similar, you can increase the pressure by turning a screw on the control. You need to do that with the power disconnected, and best to locate the manual on your particular pump set up.

Second thing to do is take apart the parts of the faucet where the flow restrictor is located--this is generally a washer like object located in the aerator. Pull it out and toss it aside and reassemble. I had to drill out the flow control in our shower heads to get adequate pressure and volume. Curiously the tub will fill with lots of pressure and volume, so these flow controls don't play nicely with well systems.

My friend has a new home with well, and the [smart guy!] plumber put in a VFD well pump with digital control. My friend sets the pressure to essentially any pressure he wants. That's the only time I've ever seen something like this and the only time I've ever been in a home served by a well where the pressure was the same as city water.
 
Mitchell, thanks. A few things to note:

1. We have this kind of pressure tank...
https://www.flexconind.com/products/well-tanks/wellrite-well-tanks/
and I don't think the two black knobs on top are pressure adjustments. They look more like rubber stoppers to me.

2. We had shower and bathroom sink faucets installed in 2017, so they must be low-flow units, too. Since they feel powerful enough, I'm hoping a kitchen faucet would be similar.

3. Is a licensed plumber allowed to pull out the flow restrictor in a faucet?
 
It depends on your interpretation of significant impact.

Since the 60 psi is the flowing pressure, by the time you get water to your sink it would be less than 44 psi due to friction loss and probably elevation head loss. So it could be in the neighborhood of 1.5 gpm or less.

The average flow allowed at a kitchen faucets is around 2.2 gpm.

If there isn't any separate, removable, pressure restrictor in your aerator you could look into buying an aerator which is rated for a higher flow.
 
powerdog said:
Mitchell, thanks. A few things to note:

1. We have this kind of pressure tank...
https://www.flexconind.com/products/well-tanks/wellrite-well-tanks/
and I don't think the two black knobs on top are pressure adjustments. They look more like rubber stoppers to me.
You likely have a pressure switch on your system which controls the ON/OFF operation of the pump. Most well pump packages have a fixed 20PSI swing from on to off, but many can be adjusted so they can swing 40-60, 50-70, 60-80, 30-50, etc. Unless limited by pump/well limits.

2. We had shower and bathroom sink faucets installed in 2017, so they must be low-flow units, too. Since they feel powerful enough, I'm hoping a kitchen faucet would be similar.

Based on the International Plumbing Code the following are the flow limits for various fixtures.
Max Flow Rates bby IPC.jpg

3. Is a licensed plumber allowed to pull out the flow restrictor in a faucet?

I would think, providing it didn't exceed the limits dictated by the code. Then one may ask what if the home has a lower pressure resulting in a lower flow, which is the real concern.
Do you plan on having a licensed plumber do it?
As mentioned above, just find an aerator that meets the requirements of the code, which is a flow higher than 1.8 GPM.(Unless maybe in California ????)
Click to expand...
 
There are no plumbing police.

You, or someone you hire, can certainly defeat the little flow restrictor gizmos that often get gunked up anyway.

Big Brother will never know.
 
I had a house on a deep well for about 25 years.
The pressure was not steady, it was high 60 low 40, on off settings at the pressure switch.

Aerators needed to be cleaned often, even after I installed a whole-house sediment filter.

Before I installed the sediment filter, my toilet and tub would turn orange and also splashes of purple-black after about a month.

A whole house filter catches lots of crud, but mine needed changing once a month.

A water softener with iron-reducing salt also helped everything stay cleaner, and the water smelled and tasted better.
 
Dog, as noted the pressure adjustment is not on the well tank, but on the line generally going to the bottom of the tank. It has electrical wires going to it and controls the on/off of the pump. As noted elsewhere you can adjust the pressure; for example you can tighten up the "swing", and also increase the pressure. Best to find the instructions for your specific model. And for goodness sake, there's 220V going through that so you need to turn off the breaker before making and changes.

Flow restrictors are generally located in each fixture; so for example, in the faucet aerator, there may be a small washer like object with a little hole in it; that's a flow restrictor. When my bathroom was remodeled, the plumber took out all the flow restrictors--and always does--because he was tired of callbacks for low pressure. I found the pressure to be a bit high in the shower (not high per se but higher than we were used to) so I did buy a little thing that fit between the shower head and pipe that allowed me to "fix" the pressure to what I wanted. I think if you search, you can find faucet aerators with various flow rates. Just replace yours with one of the higher flow rates. Since you are on a well, you are probably not concerned with water usage.

Also some of these filters you have--even whole house ones--may have a built in flow rate that cannot be exceeded. For example, a Pelican whole house filter system shows a max flow rate of 5 GPM and if you are running several things at once at 40 PSI you might find the flow and pressure to be less than what you want. The solution is to either remove these things or upsize them to ones with larger flow rates.

I've had to remove all the flow restrictors, and even drill out parts of my shower head (on my home with the well) to achieve anything remotely approaching city-supplied constant pressure water.
 
Call Delta direct and ask them about higher flow rate aerators or do they use a flow restrictor separate from the aerator.

It's hard to believe that a filter system that's limited to 5 gpm is called a whole house filter system. If they're dissipating enough pressure to limit the flow to a max rate of 5 gpm, that would be a big pressure drop. I suspect the units deigned effectiveness would be limited to 5 gpm.
 
I will call Delta to ask about the aerator/restrictor.

To raise another question that has been asked 1000's of times, the faucet I'm considering is available from Amazon. Delta has said that an idential model name and number will be an identical faucet, wherever it's bought. These are the same on Delta's website and Amazon.

I'm trying to judge this against what I often read, which is that plumbing supply faucets are different and better. Maybe that was the case before manufacturers started relying so much on plastic?

My common sense tells me that if you call Delta for support and tell them you have Model X with number 1234567, they're not going to ask if you have the good one from a plumbing supply. Also, when I was looking around in Lowe's, I saw lots of model names that Amazon doesn't sell. I can believe those would be made to a cheaper standard.
 
Yes you have to look closely at ALL the details and specs on products in an effort to ensure true equals.
I would certainly hope that two products that are not identical would not carry the same model and possibly sub model numbers for options.

The trouble is nowadays, that they don't include all the pertinent information in their ads. One reason appears obvious to me, it's because the person writing the ads doesn't know what they're writing about and/or wasn't given the appropriate info. I find it very frustrating having to deal with computers and people not knowing the products.
caveat emptor.

Don't hesitate to tell Delta exactly what your concerns are on this subject, including where they were made.
You can ask the questions.

EDIT: Maybe one of the professional plumbers that have experience this problem can comment on the model number being the same or not.
 
After reading this, I went to the Home Depot the other day and checked out there supply of aerators for faucets. They had mostly 1.5 gpm, some 1.0 gpm, all listed as "water saver". Of those there was a pretty vast selection. What I was looking for was one that doesn't claim anything about saving water. Of that there were just two (Regular and DeLuxe) 2.2 gpm. I bought them and what a difference on the bathroom faucets, and a marginal difference on the kitchen--but what a difference. As I am on a well system here now, I'm not so much concerned with my GPM as I am with comfort and convenience.

So, make sure your aerator is 2.2 or better if you want a good feel. Faucet will be noticably better feel with 2.2 as opposed to 1.8.
 
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