Can Water Heater Expansion Tank Cause a Low Water Pressure
If you just installed or replaced your water heater expansion tank, and then experienced low water pressure, you might think that is due to expansion tank itself. Is it the real case ?
Can an expansion tank reduce water pressure ?
A water heater expansion tank is not capable of lowering water pressure in your house. It just absorbs the expanded water volume due to elevated temperature in the water heater.
If you experienced a lower water pressure after replacing or installing an expansion tank in your water heater there could be some other reasons that cause the low water pressure.
A minor drop in pressure could occur in hot water faucets than in the cold-water faucets. That is primarily because, the length of pipe, nature of pipe fittings and number fittings that water travels through to come to your hot water faucet has an impact to a pressure drop.
If you experience a very low pressure after installing an expansion tank, that could be due to following reasons.
- Shutoff valves are not fully opened
- Use of smaller diameter pipes and fittings
- Somehow you may have blocked incoming water line, a displaced gasket could be the culprit.
In addition above reasons, there could be more critical reasons also that cause a drop in water pressure throughout the house.
- Clogged mainline
- Damaged mainline
- Breakdown or problem in the city water main.
- Frozen or freezing pipes
Specially, If you have not used your hot water system regularly for few days in a freezing weather due to broken water heater or expansion, that may have led to a frozen pipe condition. Therefore, after a while the pressure in your hot water faucet could restore after a while.
If the drop in water pressure is due some other reason, you need to fix the issue do restore the pressure.