Fresh water system pressure issue

cjjjdeck

Petty Officer 2nd Class
Joined
Apr 22, 2012
Messages
165
I know there are a ton of owners that have galley/head sinks and stern washdown systems in their boats and mine has them too. I?ve never read any posts/threads that addressed the problem I had with this fresh water system (although I might have missed them).

The spray faucets in the galley/head sinks had too high of pressure and would ricochet the spray from the sink to go all over whoever was operating the faucet. Even better when some residual ?pink stuff? from winter storage goes all over your Tommy Bahama shirt ?.. nice (well, ok, actually it was an LL Bean yellow T)! The stern washdown had the opposite problem, weak water pressure. It was fine for washing down people (a nice gentile spray), but did little to washdown much of anything else (like the swim platform or deck).

After some trial and error, I finally tamed down the two sink faucets by using a combination of in line ball valves and some homemade washers inserted into the spray head base to further restrict the flow to the head. For the washdown area, I found a short (maybe stubby is a better term) jet spray head with an integrated shut off valve that fit into the recessed washdown housing. That helped greatly in making it more useful for what we primarily use it for.

Has anyone else been frustrated with fresh water systems operating like this? Maybe it?s unique to my brand?
 
Joined
Feb 17, 2012
Messages
2,906
Re: Fresh water system pressure issue

depending on your brand of pump some have a pressure setting on the pump face that you adjust to increase or decrease the pressure. If not they always sell pressure regulators that can reduce the pressure. Low pressure could be a pump that needs to be rebuilt (they sell kits) or a pump that is to small for the job.

Addition: with all pumps theres a relationship between flow and pressure if you reduce flow (put finger over end of pipe) then you get a increase in pressure so the wash down pump may just need a spray head attached to decrease the flow and increase the pressure
 
Last edited:

cjjjdeck

Petty Officer 2nd Class
Joined
Apr 22, 2012
Messages
165
Re: Fresh water system pressure issue

Thanks Glenn. You're spot on with your comments.

I contacted the pump manufacturer hoping it had pressure adjustment, unfortunately not. I also discussed option on how to regulate the pressure. The regulators I tried still had too much pressure to the sink, so I figured it was probably the way the spray head was designed.
 
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