I have come to the conclusion that we will likely need to upgrade our incoming 1.5" water main line to a 2" or 2.5". Likely looking at replacing the line from the street, upgrading the tap with the city and running the bigger line into the wash for more volume. We have approximately 100ft from the street main to the water meter in the equipment room. Has anyone had to do this? Just trying to get a really rough idea of what this costs all in?
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Cost of upgrading to a larger water line
- Thread starter bert79
- Start date
Dan kamsickas
GinSan Technician
Theoretically, you should be able to flow around 80gpm through a 1.5 inch copper line at average pressure. I say theoretically because there are a ton of variables that will affect it. Is there buildup/leaks in the supply line from the street? Is the meter itself causing a restriction? The number and placement of elbows in your existing plumbing. The amount of buildup in the existing plumbing. If you've got a couple of autos that need 40 gpm for rinse then even in best case you don't have enough flow.
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Waxman
Super Moderator
what about trying some thing like 2 55 gallon drums tied together at the bottom with some PVC and you use those as your reservoir for the things that use a lot of volume in a short amount of time like the touch free high-pressure pump? It doesn't seem like this would be too hard to accomplish with A little giant pump and float to feed the touch free. I would try something like that before I dug up the parking lot and installed 100 feet of larger line at a huge expense. They sell many different plastic tank configurations that might fit into an equipment room somewhere. I've even seen tanks that were designed to be on top of a small mezzanine. Just brainstorming here…
OurTown
Well-known member
If pressure is good but flow is not sufficient it means that you have a high enough static pressure but residual pressure is not there. That hints as a restriction somewhere upstream of where the drop is measured. Every time your water changes direction or is squeezed through a valve or other device it "loses" pressure. If you have a backflow preventer put a gauge on the first port and see what happens there when you have a heavy flow.
Take a look at your nearest fire hydrant and see what color the dome is painted. If they adhere to national standards the color will give you a hint as to the quality of the water supply available in the area. If its blue (>1500gpm)or green (1000-1500gpm)you should have good water supply, orange is marginal (500-1000gpm)and red (<500gpm)is not good. If the nearest hydrant has a red dome your problem may be with the availability of water supply in the area itself, and a new line from your building to the main may not fix your problem. In my past life as a firefighter I've seen residential hydrants that would not flow 100 GPM, and they are hooked directly to the water main.
In the past I've managed to get by with substandard water supply by gating all rinse tank valves way down. My water wizard pump uses 35GPM, but I can gate the valve down to 10 GPM and it has plenty of time to catch up and refill the tank during low pressure wax, SFR, and dry before the next car enters. You can also gate down your SS rinse tank to around 12 GPM and it will be fine for a 3 bay. As you likely know most float valves are trying to flow in excess of 50GPM but there's no real need for that high of a flow. Even with one auto and 3 SS bays and SFR production you could get probably by with a total main flow of 40 GPM flow rate if you had to.
Preferably with everything running your incoming pressure should get no lower than 40 psi. Hydrominders are rated for 40psi inlet pressure but will work at 25psi (per a hydro systems engineer that I talked to many years ago). Ironically a hydro at 25psi is going to put out a stronger solution than a hydrominder at 40psi(again per hydro) . The important part is the pressure to all hydrominders and injectors is the pressure is consistent so that the ratios stay the same.
Also all this problem could be as simple as replacing a badly corroded incoming valve or occluded galvanized plumbing , so look at that before you spend >10K on a new line. I recently replaced a 2" galvanized nipple on a main that was close to a copper line and even though it was only about ten years old it had a hunk of corrosion the size of a large marble in it.
Take a look at your nearest fire hydrant and see what color the dome is painted. If they adhere to national standards the color will give you a hint as to the quality of the water supply available in the area. If its blue (>1500gpm)or green (1000-1500gpm)you should have good water supply, orange is marginal (500-1000gpm)and red (<500gpm)is not good. If the nearest hydrant has a red dome your problem may be with the availability of water supply in the area itself, and a new line from your building to the main may not fix your problem. In my past life as a firefighter I've seen residential hydrants that would not flow 100 GPM, and they are hooked directly to the water main.
In the past I've managed to get by with substandard water supply by gating all rinse tank valves way down. My water wizard pump uses 35GPM, but I can gate the valve down to 10 GPM and it has plenty of time to catch up and refill the tank during low pressure wax, SFR, and dry before the next car enters. You can also gate down your SS rinse tank to around 12 GPM and it will be fine for a 3 bay. As you likely know most float valves are trying to flow in excess of 50GPM but there's no real need for that high of a flow. Even with one auto and 3 SS bays and SFR production you could get probably by with a total main flow of 40 GPM flow rate if you had to.
Preferably with everything running your incoming pressure should get no lower than 40 psi. Hydrominders are rated for 40psi inlet pressure but will work at 25psi (per a hydro systems engineer that I talked to many years ago). Ironically a hydro at 25psi is going to put out a stronger solution than a hydrominder at 40psi(again per hydro) . The important part is the pressure to all hydrominders and injectors is the pressure is consistent so that the ratios stay the same.
Also all this problem could be as simple as replacing a badly corroded incoming valve or occluded galvanized plumbing , so look at that before you spend >10K on a new line. I recently replaced a 2" galvanized nipple on a main that was close to a copper line and even though it was only about ten years old it had a hunk of corrosion the size of a large marble in it.
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If your water line a 1 1/2" galvanized steel that has been in the ground for long time it's going to be very corroded inside and this will cause friction loss so I can see where you could have a problem running a PDQ 4000 and 3 bays of Self-Serve. You'll lose about 10 psi going though the back-flow preventor. The biggest flow killer would be your water softener system.
2Biz
Thread Killer!
Check the flanges on your meter or any other connection that might have dissimilar metals. If they are cast iron, you might have buildup....Galvanic Corrosion...I went from a 2" down to a 1" meter (My 4 bay used to have an automatic in one bay) becasue the 2" was costing me a fortune in minimum usage. 33K minimum a month for water and sewage. When I took out the 2" meter, the 2" pipe was blocked about 95% at the flanges! Only about a dime sized hole was left for water flow...Something you might want to check out....That one would have driven me nuts! Just glad I tripped over it!
Buckeye Hydro
Active member
Out of a 1.5" pipe at typical pressures I'd expect 40 to 70 gpm.
65 to 120 gpm from a 2"
80 to 170 gpm from a 2.5"
A quick and dirty calculation for flow from a pipe is diameter squared times 20, so for a 2" pipe:
2*2*20=80 gpm
Russ
65 to 120 gpm from a 2"
80 to 170 gpm from a 2.5"
A quick and dirty calculation for flow from a pipe is diameter squared times 20, so for a 2" pipe:
2*2*20=80 gpm
Russ
OurTown
Well-known member
This is an excellent idea and I tried it yesterday. We have a 2" main with 42 psi after the backflow preventer. Cat 3545 with a 175 gallon feed tank and a 1" solenoid valve feeding it with a float switch in the tank. When it opens the pressure after the softener dropped to 20 psi. After throttling it back I now have 32 psi.
