[johnricc]

I'm looking for a solution to my water pressure / volume problem.

We've just finished renovating our master bathroom (on the second floor of our colonial home.) The volume of water coming out of our shower in that bathroom was always bad. With the new (expensive) showerhead that my wife purchased, the beautiful new tile shower is now almost unusable. (This is a hard pill to swallow after spending many thousands of dollars on a new bathroom.)

We also have very low volume output coming out of our cold water faucet at the sink in the same bath. (The hot water volume in the sink is fine.)

Some facts to note:
• We previously had just a shower in that bathroom, which always had a low volume output.
• Included in the renovation was the addition of a bathtub, which has excellent pressure / volume.
• The old sink faucets in that bathroom were also pretty bad.
• The rest of the house (including the shared bathroom on the second floor) have excellent water pressure / volume.
• The house is about 40 years old. (Prior to us moving to the house, a single man lived there for 32 years and probably never used the other bathroom on the second floor.)
• I've checked with the local water company. They tell me that we do not have hard water where I live. (Something about being fed by a local reservoir and a hard water rating of 5, whatever that means.)

In hindsight, I'm sure the right time to check all the flows would have been before tiling the floors and walls, but sadly, that did not happen.

I've been told that the problem might be with the valves. (Supposedly, deposits build up in the old shutoff valves.)

I'd suspect that replacing the shutoff valve for the cold water faucet at the sink would be a simple job, considering that it is visible under the sink.

I'm far more concerned about the shower. Is it typical to have a valve for the shower? Where would it be? Given that we moved the location of the shower and that we still have problems, my fear is that, if there is a valve slowing the flow, it would be somewhere upstream of the new shower (maybe somewhere in the floor?? )

My best hope, I suppose, is that it is located in the pipes directly below the shower head. (The shower plumbing runs through a wall that abuts to a closet, so we could, theoretically open up the wall from the closet and not have to rip out the tiling.)

So, I guess my questions are:
• Does this sound like a valve problem?
• If so, do you know where the valve for the shower might be?
• Does anyone have any brilliant suggestions, other than buying a new showerhead designed for low flows?

Thanks for enduring this long question.
John

Updated, April 23: I see that answers to many related posts ask for manufacturer / model numbers. The shower valve we have now is the Grohe Geneva Series Shower Valve Trim Model Number 19725000.

[ballengerb1]

Could you tell me the size of the supply pipes going to the mixing valve, is this what the manufacturer recommends for your valve? Remove the shower head and also the aerators at the sink. Turn the shower on full and catch the water in a bucket for 1 minute, how many gallons did you collect. Try that with the sink too.