Why Does My Water Pressure Increase After a Shower

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Why Does My Water Pressure Increase After a Shower

The subject of water pressure when linked with showers is a tricky one. In most cases we are dealing with a situation that shows pressure levels that are too low to handle the requests of the shower. If faced with such a problem a good shower head for low pressure installations can be a great solution. On the other hand, if you are seeing that water pressure is too high you could have this shower head to blame (that is if you recently purchased one and the variation in pressure was noticed after the installation and not before).

The first thing that you need to do is analyze the current water pressure level of your house’s system. You can accurately do this by purchasing a water pressure gauge from any local plumbing supply or hardware store. Use it to measure pressure and if it is around 40 PSI, this is a normal value. On the other hand, if water pressure is 80 PSI, it is actually the maximum permitted for household water pressure. The next step would be to measure water pressure after taking a shower, as soon as possible. If it is higher than normal then a proper investigation needs to be performed. Also, if we are dealing with a moderate but safe increase in pressure this is not a problem and it is actually normal. If the pressure gauge shows a value close or higher than 80 PSI then we need to call in a specialist because the pressure is just too high and pipes can crack, thus causing links and even more bad problems can appear.

Another way of figuring out your shower water pressure is to grab a five gallon bucket and fill it by using your shower supply pipe or a garden hose, without the shower head being installed. If you notice that the bucket gets filled in around 15 seconds to 1 minute the pressure is normal. If you notice that it fills up faster then we have pressure that is simply too high. There are different ways to modify water pressure and the fact that it gets too high after taking a shower might mean that we are dealing with a problem. This is a rare occasion as most houses are having problems with water pressure being too low and not too high. A plumber can assist you in figuring out the possible problems.