Water Flowing in Pipes - why size matters (1)

These pages explain how to choose the correct sizes of pipe when plumbing a house,
and why it matters. This section explores the theory, and a practical worked example is
given inpart 2 .

Why do plumbers use so much half-inch copper pipe? This article explains why water
pipes in houses are the sizes they are. It shows how to choose the correct size of pipe,
why it matters, and whether or not a house water-supply system will work properly once
it's installed.

Plumbing books say what to do, but not why. Building services design books offer design
rules, but not where they came from nor why they matter, and fluid mechanics
textbooks are full of complicated theory that doesn't seem relevant to real problems -
Why does this pipe make a noise? - Can I add another radiator?

So I started from first principles, asking basic questions and following up the answers until
I could see what was going on. It turned out to be rather more complicated than I
thought. Calculations for a real house are in part 2.

Why does water flow?

This question seems almost too stupid to be worth asking, yet it leads to a way of
heating the hot-water cylinder without needing a pump.

A pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter...

When you turn on the tap, you expect water to flow out of the tank and down the pipe.
Why does it do that?

Things don't just start moving by themselves. There must be a force acting on the water
in the pipe for it to move, and the obvious one is its own weight. Water is quite heavy
stuff - a litre of it weighs a kilogram. The water in the tank pushes down on the water in
the pipe.

So does the size of the tank matter? Common sense suggests that a big tank that holds
more water must apply more force to the water in the pipe than a little one would. But
common sense is wrong. The force pushing the water down the pipe has nothing to do
with the volume of the tank, nor its surface area.

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The force making the water flow down the pipe must exist at the entrance to the pipe.
How big is this force? What controls it?

Suppose the water is stationary - any taps connected to the pipe are turned off. Now
think about the column of water directly above the pipe entrance (shown as a dotted
line). It has weight, and its weight is a force acting downwards. So,

Down-force on the water in the pipe = Weight of water in the column above the pipe

But surely the weight of the water just outside the column affects the down-force too?
No, it doesn't. How can it? Weight acts downwards, not sideways. The force due to the
weight of the water outside the column acts downwards too - but outside the column.
So the down-force in the column stays the same no matter how much water there is
around it.

In the sketch above, both tanks hold the same amount of water, but one is twice as tall
as the other. The water surface in the taller tank is twice as far away from the pipe, so
there is twice as much force pushing water out. If you punctured both tanks near the
bottom, water would squirt out much faster from the tall one.

What about the down-force at some point further down inside the pipe? Since the
down-force at any point is due solely to the weight of water above it, this force must be
bigger at a point further below the water surface, because the column of water above
it is bigger and heavier

Suppose the pipe runs vertically, then horizontally under a floor, then down vertically
again. The water in the horizontal section has weight too - won't this add to the down-
force? Well, no, it won't, for the same reason as before - weight acts downwards on
that section of pipe, not sideways. So it turns out that the force that makes the water
flow has nothing to do with the size of the tank, nor with the length or shape of the pipe
run. It's purely to do with the vertical distance between the water surface in the header
tank and the point where the water leaves the pipe at the tap. This distance is known
as the headof water for the system.

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Water squirts out of a hole

The force acts on the water in the pipe, and the pipe diameter is known, so it's often
convenient to think of the force as a pressure. Pressure is simply force divided by area -
in this case, the cross-sectional area of the pipe.

Think of a particle of water somewhere in the header tank. With no water moving, the
particle is stationary. There is no net force acting on it. If there were, it would move. But
there is a force applied to it - the weight of the water above it. And if the particle
happened to be near the wall of the tank, and you poked a hole in the tank wall, the
particle would escape through it. So there must also be a sideways force from all the
particles next to it, or it wouldn't move sideways out of the hole. Yet if it's not moving, all
these forces must be in balance. In fact, in a stationary liquid, the pressure at a point is
a force that acts in all directions at once: up, down and sideways. The particle is ready
to move in any direction at a moment's notice, like the SAS. It's possible, and normal, to
talk about the pressure at a point in a liquid.

The pressure at the bottom of a vertical pipe is ...

The weight depends on the volume of water (in m3) and its density (in kg/m3). The
density of water is about 1,000 kg/m3 - a litre weighs a kilogram. So

where g is the acceleration due to gravity - about 9.8 m/sec/sec. (Kilograms are about
mass, not force, so g has to be included to do the conversion.)

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The pressure depends on the length of vertical pipe. In fact, the length that matters is
the height difference between the bottom of the pipe and the water surface at the top
- in the diagram on the left, the height h. This is known as the head. It's measured in
metres, or feet of water, or mm of mercury, or pounds per square inch (psi), or Newtons
per square metre (N/sq.m). Whatever units are used, it's still a pressure.

What's a Newton?

This might be a good point to talk briefly about units. I'm used to
thinking in proper engineering units like Newtons and watts, not pounds and BTUs,
whatever they may be. British Thermal Underpants?

Isaac Newton was one of the first to say clearly that

Force = mass x acceleration

The down-force on your hand when you're holding an apple is the mass of the apple
(0.1 kg, say) times the acceleration due to gravity (about 10 m/sec/sec). This force is
(0.1 kg x 10 m/sec/sec) = 1 Newton. Force these days is measured in Newtons. A
Newton is the weight of a small apple - but then, in Newton's time the
apples were smaller.

Proper forces, like the weight you can lift with one hand, are lots of Newtons. A bucket
holds 9 litres of water (2 gallons) and weighs 8 kg (18 lb.). This weight is a force of 80
Newtons. The pressure on the bottom of the bucket is about 3,000 Newtons per square
metre (N/sq.m), though the pressure on your fingers when you're carrying the bucket by
its handle is much higher - maybe 50,000 N/sq.m, or 7 psi (lb/sq.in).

Example - 15mm pipe

What force, and what pressure, is exerted by a 1 metre vertical column of water in a
15mm pipe?

A vertical 15mm pipe 1 metre long holds about 0.15 litres of water, which weighs 0.15
kg, giving a down-force on the bottom end of

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Force = mass x acceleration = 0.15 (kg) x 9.8 (m/sec/sec) ≈ 1.5 N (Newtons).

This force exerts a pressure of

Pressure = force / area = 1.5 (N) / 145 (sq.mm) = 1.5 x (1,000/0.145) ≈ 10,000 N/sq.m

at the end of the pipe. This sounds huge but actually it isn't very big at all. You could
poke your finger in the bottom of the pipe to prevent the water flowing out.

By the way, normal atmospheric pressure is ten times greater than this, but we don't
notice it because it surrounds us. Atmospheric pressure is the same at both ends of the
pipe, so it can't influence the flow. What matters is pressure difference.

Hot water from gravity

There are lots of ways of heating the water in the cylinder, and one of the oldest
methods can be the simplest and cheapest. It depends on the apparently odd fact
that hot water weighs less than cold water.

Here is a boiler heating the water in a cylinder. All the boiler

does is heat water in the pipe on the right. The water itself does the rest. To see why,
think about the pressures in the pipes on each side of the boiler. The right-hand pipe
holds hot water at, say, 82oC. The pressure at the bottom is then:

Similarly, the pressure at the bottom of the left-hand pipe, which holds water at, say,
65oC, is:

If these two pressures are different, the water will be forced to move. And as the graph
shows, water at 82oC is about 1% less dense than the same water at 65oC. This may not
sound very much, but it's enough.

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The difference in the density of the water in the flow and return pipes is about 10 kg/m3.
A litre of the cold water weighs just 10 grams more than a litre of the hot water. This tiny
difference - less than the weight of an English robin - provides the force that makes the
water move.

The circulating pressure then seems to be:

but there is one more detail to factor in.

The water being moved is hot, so it weighs less than cold water, so the circulating
pressure would make it move slightly faster than if it were cold water. The correction is
easy to add:

It's more usual to express the pressure in a more general way that doesn't directly
involve h, because then you can calculate how fast the water will flow round even a
complicated circuit. But this is getting ahead of the story. For now, assume that the
boiler is on the ground floor and the cylinder is on the floor above, so that h is (say) 3
metres. Then, putting in the numbers for this example, the pressure is

This is a real pressure difference, and the cold water will push the hot water around. The
only major drawback is that the pressure difference is so small, which means that the
pipes have to be fat for it to work well. But it does work, and it doesn't need a separate
pump.

How fast can water flow?

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The next obvious question is, what controls the speed of the water that flows out of the
tap?

This is where things start getting a little more complicated. Pipes have been in use for
quite a long time now, and many clever people have tried to understand exactly what
happens when you turn on a tap, but believe it or not, the physics of water flowing in
pipes is still more described than explained. The problem lies in friction.

Sticky cylinders

When the water is moving slowly, it's easy. Think of the water in the pipe as a series of
thin-walled concentric cylinders, one inside the other, each sliding relative to its
neighbours. This is more than just a convenient image. It gives a good picture of what's
really going on. The interesting stuff happens where the cylinders rub past each other.
The cylinder nearest the pipe wall doesn't really move at all - it seems to be stuck to the
pipe. The next one in does move a bit, and as they slide past each other, the outer
cylinder exerts a frictional drag on the inner one and slows it down. Similarly, the next
one in and the one inside that are slowed down too. The cylinder right in the centre of
the pipe moves the fastest.

If you don't believe this, it's possible (but not easy) to set up an experiment to prove it. It
does happen.

Some liquids flow more freely than others, and the concept of viscosity was invented to
describe the effect. Viscosity is really a definition of how well a liquid resists shear stress -
that is, the force making layers of the liquid slide past each other.

Viscosity

Viscosity is measured like this. With a layer of liquid trapped between two parallel
plates, the top one is pulled so that it slides steadily over the liquid. The viscosity of the
liquid is defined as

The units of viscosity are evidently Newton-seconds per square metre - that is, [Pressure x
Time] - though some people prefer "poises" or (my favourite) "feet-slug-seconds". That
one really conjures up a picture. But it's useful to have the idea of viscosity, because it

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says explicitly that a liquid resists being made to move. A force is needed, and the force
increases with speed.

Engine oil has a viscosity of about 0.5 N.sec/sq.m., which means that plates 1 metre
square separated by an oil film 1mm thick could be slid slowly apart at 1 metre/sec by
a strong man applying a force of 500 N (Newtons) - about 100 lb, or 50 kg. A millimetre
of cold water, by contrast, needs a force of only 1 N - just a few ounces. A strong Newt
could do it, if the Slugs didn't get under its Feet.

If the viscosity of water is so low, why does it matter?

Think back to turning on the tap. As the water in the vertical pipe begins to move, the
cylinders of water slide reluctantly past each other. The viscous drag appears as a force
acting upwards, opposing the down-force due to the weight of water. The water
accelerates, and since the opposing force depends on speed, this viscous drag
increases too. Eventually, when the tap is running freely, the forces exactly balance -
there is just enough down-force to overcome the friction force at this speed of
flow.Viscous friction is the force that controls how fast the water flows. Viscosity explains
why the water leaving the tap doesn't just carry on accelerating without limit, as it
would if there were no opposing force.

Now, the force pushing downwards is the pressure. More exactly, the net down-force
on the water in a length of pipe is the pressure difference between its ends. This down-
force is exactly balanced by the opposing up-force due to viscosity. So there must be a
simple relationship between the pressure drop in a pipe and the corresponding flow
rate. It's not all that difficult to derive it from first principles, if you enjoy integration (and I
know some people do). But if you don't feel like doing that right now, the answer is

where μ is the viscosity of the fluid flowing in a pipe of radius R and length L.
Unfortunately, although this equation is nice and simple, it comes with a warning - it's
only true for slow-moving fluid. But how slow is slow?

Chaos rules

About 120 years ago, in Manchester, a man called Osborne Reynolds was trying to
understand - or at least describe - the flow of fluids in pipes. After many careful
experiments, he decided that what happened to the flow depended on four things -
the viscosity and density of the fluid, the diameter of the pipe, and the speed the fluid
was moving. He put these four quantities together like this to make a dimensionless
number:

Reynolds number

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Speed x Diameter x (Density / Viscosity)

The number has been known ever since as the Reynolds number, Re. Respect!

Reynolds found that when the fluid moves slowly, the flow stays smooth and even, but
as the speed is increased it eventually becomes rough and turbulent - chaotic, we
would say now. The transition to turbulence always happens at a Reynolds number
between 2,000 and 3,000, no matter what fluid is used. (The reason for the uncertainty is
probably to do with small variations in initial conditions - chaos is like that.)

In other words, the simple equation above relating flow rate to pressure drop is only
valid when the moving water has a Reynolds number of 2,000 or less. If Re is higher than
this, the water starts bouncing around unpredictably, and it takes more energy - more
pressure - to shift it along.

As well as speed and pipe size, the Reynolds number Re depends on the ratio of the
water's density to its viscosity, so to save having to work out (ρ/μ) each time you need
to calculate Re I've included a table so that you can simply look it up.

Table 1: Viscosity and density of water

Temp oC Viscosity μ Density ρ ρ/μ

10 0.00133 999.7384 753,000

20 0.001 998.2 998,000

30 0.000753 996.6739 1,320,000

40 0.000567 995.1502 1,760,000

50 0.000427 993.6288 2,330,000

60 0.000321 992.1097 3,090,000

70 0.000242 990.5929 4,100,000

80 0.000182 989.0785 5,440,000

90 0.000137 987.5663 7,210,000

Example - Reynolds number

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Cold water is flowing through a 15mm pipe run. How fast can it go before it starts to
become turbulent?

The Reynolds number for this flow is

Re = (Speed) x (14/1000) x (753,000) = (Speed) x 10,500

(assuming "cold" means 10 deg.C and the pipe's internal diameter is 14mm), so if Re is
to be 2,000 or less, then

Speed < 2,000/10,500 ... or Speed < 0.19 m/sec

Not very fast, then. How about hot water (at, say, 70 deg.C)?

Re = (Speed) x (14/1000) x (4,100,000) = (Speed) x 57,400

so Speed < 2,000/57,400 ... or Speed < 0.035 m/sec

which is really slow. Don't get too hung up on the numbers, by the way. Chaos is not
exact. It's enough to say that turbulence is likely to start at around 0.2 metres/sec.

Is turbulent flow essential in domestic water systems?

Cold water flowing in 15mm pipe starts to become turbulent at the slow speed of 0.2
metres/sec. In 22mm pipe, the speed is lower still (0.13 m/sec). Does it matter that the
water is moving so slowly?

The question is, how long are you prepared to wait for the sink or the bath to fill? A flow
rate of 0.2 metres/second means that just 0.2m (20cm) of the pipe's contents come out
of the tap in one second. Now, 22mm pipe (the size normally used to plumb in a bath)
has an internal cross-sectional area of 320 sq.mm, so the volume occupied by 20cm of
water is just:

Volume = Length x Area = (320 x10-6) x (20 x10-2) = 64 x10-6 cubic metres = 0.064 litres.

A bath holds typically 100 litres. It would take nearly half an hour to fill at this rate.
Clearly 0.2 metres/second is far too low a speed to be useful. If a higher speed means
turbulence, then so be it.

The trouble is that allowing turbulence is really not a good idea. For one thing, the
particles of water are bashing into each other all the time, and that takes energy, and
that means a much bigger force has to be applied to move it. For another, the force
you need can't be calculated. It has to be inferred from other peoples' experiments.

Shake, rattle and moan

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But the worst part of turbulence in pipes is the noise. In turbulent flow, particles of water
move in random directions at random speeds. Well, so what? One particle of water is
much like another. The problems begin when a particle decides, all by itself, to change
into steam.

Large pressure differences can appear across very small volumes of turbulent water,
especially when the water flows round a bend, or through a constriction like a valve or
a tap.

In fact, bends can cause the flow to separate from the wall of the pipe, like this.
Because the water is suddenly forced to move sideways across the pipe, whilst at the
same time it is moving along the pipe, vortex eddies appear. They spiral off down the
pipe, wasting energy as they go, until they are damped out by viscous friction. Bends
should be avoided. If they are inevitable, then the more gradual they are, the better.

Sudden changes of velocity (that is, speed in a particular direction) cause equally
sudden - and dramatic - local changes in pressure.

This creates problems because water at a lower pressure boils at a lower temperature.
At the normal atmospheric pressure of 1 bar (14.5 psi, or 100,000 N/sq.m), water boils at
100oC of course, but if the pressure drops to 0.1 bar it will boil at only 47oC. The water in
a central heating system is hotter than this.

When the local pressure somewhere in the water drops low enough, a particle of water
turns immediately into a bubble of steam. The bubble soon moves back into a region of
higher pressure and collapses, and the resulting shock wave zips through the water,
bouncing off the pipe walls. The more turbulent the flow, the more often this happens.
The process is known as cavitation, and it can corrode the pipework as well as a
making a disturbing amount of noise. If you think about it, bubbles do form
spontaneously in turbulent water. A waterfall, or the wake of a ship, or rocks in a stream
all cause the water to foam. So does flushing the loo!

More speed means a lot more noise

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Measurements show that the cavitation noise from fittings (that is, elbows and tees)
goes up with the speed the water is moving. Each increase of 1 m/s raises the noise
level by a factor of about 4, and it's generally agreed that a water speed above about
3 metres per second makes cavitation noise unacceptably loud.

Cavitation isn't the only source of noise. Turbulence causes eddies to appear in the
flow, and besides wasting energy they cause noise and vibration in the pipe network.
Large eddies can be moving at up to 10% of the average speed of flow, and contain
energy at frequencies from a minimum defined by

fmin = (Average water speed) / (Pipe diameter)

on upwards. For a 15mm pipe carrying water at 1.5 metres/sec, fmin turns out to be 100
Hz. Frequencies above 100 Hz contain progressively less energy, because viscous
friction damps them more quickly.

The energy is coupled to the pipe network and may cause some part of it to resonate.
The moving water acts rather like a white noise generator, seeking out any resonances
in the pipe network. That's why pipes should be clamped firmly to the wall at intervals of
no more than a metre or so. The speed of sound in water is about 1450 m/sec (at 15oC)
- about 30% faster than in air - so a 1 metre length of pipe can't resonate at a
frequency below about 700 Hz, and there shouldn't be enough stray energy there to
worry about.

All this boils down to an engineering trade-off between cost and convenience. Slow-
moving water implies large-diameter pipes, which would cost more to install. The key
question is, how much noise will people accept?

Most sources recommend that the speed of water in pipes should be kept to less than 2
m/sec, and some specify a maximum speed of 1.5 or even 1 m/sec. Remember the

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Slug. The Reynolds numbers corresponding to usable water speeds for each size of pipe
are summarised here.

Table 2: Maximum Reynolds numbers for standard pipes

Re 10 15 22 28
6 mm 35 mm 42 mm 54 mm
at... mm mm mm mm

0.3
2,600 4,800 7,300 11,000 14,000 18,000 21,000 28,000
m/s

1.0
8,600 16,000 24,000 36,000 47,000 59,000 71,000 93,000
m/s

2.0
17,000 32,000 49,000 73,000 94,000 120,000 140,000 190,000
m/s

The table shows clearly that the Reynolds number for water moving at 2 metres/sec
is way larger than the 2,000-3,000 maximum that would guarantee non-turbulent flow.
Real plumbing in real houses is designed on the basis that the water flow will be chaotic
and turbulent. Unfortunately, there is as yet no proper theory to describe turbulent flow,
so systems have to be designed on the basis of experience rather than physics. The
simple theory I've been investigating just doesn't apply.

What happens in the real world?

So if there is no simple theory, is there a complicated one? Pipeline systems do get built,
after all, and the engineers who design them must know what they're doing. How do
they manage it?

Darcy-Weisbach

One key tool seems to be an expression called the Darcy-Weisbach equation, which
predicts how much pressure would be needed to push a given fluid along a pipe at a
particular speed. What makes it tricky to use is that it includes a "friction factor" ( f )
which depends not only on the smoothness of the pipe - since copper is smoother than,
say, concrete, you'd expect it to have a smaller friction loss - but also the Reynolds
number of the flow. But that in turn depends on the speed of flow. In other words, you
can only calculate the speed if you already know the speed! It's not quite as daft as it
sounds, but it's certainly rather complicated if you only want to design the plumbing in
a house. I've included a worked example in part 2.

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Real-world engineers prefer a simpler approach. They use the Hazen-Williams equation.
The equation is strictly only valid for water at below about 25oC, but that's OK. It's much
simpler than the alternatives. To use it, we need to know the head h, the pipe's
length L and the 'hydraulic radius' (Rh - half the pipe's internal radius). And because the
material the pipe is made from can also make a difference, there's a friction
coefficient C which for ordinary copper or plastic pipe can be taken as 150. The graph
below illustrates what the equation predicts will happen when the head is 3m, as it
might be for a bath or shower. It shows that a small increase in the length of a short
pipe makes a big difference to the flow-rate. On the other hand, you could safely add
another 10m length to the garden hose without it making much difference at all.

Hazen-Williams

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The graphs illustrate that the flow rate you can get from a given head drops off
dramatically as the pipe length increases. But using the equation to design the
plumbing in a house would lead to a lot of tedious calculation. There is a better and
simpler approach, which I describe in part 2.

Real pipes for real houses

In the real world the range of pipe sizes you can actually buy is quite restricted. Builders'
merchants usually stock the standard sizes listed in the table below. The size given (eg.
15 mm) is the outside diameter of the pipe.

Pipe dimensions

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Table 3: Standard plumbing pipe sizes

Plumbers' 10 15 22 28 35 42 54
merchants call it ... mm mm mm mm mm mm mm

Some plumbers 3/8

11/4 11/2
in 1/2 in 3/4 in 1 in 2 in
know it as ... in in

Internal diameter
8.8 13.6 20.2 26.2 32.6 39.6 51.6
(mm)

Cross-sectional
61 145 320 539 835 1,232 2,091
area (in mm2)

In passing, it's worth pointing out that the standard sizes changed slightly when
metrication was introduced. This might matter if the half-inch pipe that was installed in
your kitchen thirty years ago is not exactly the same size as the new 15mm pipe you've
just bought to plumb in the new dishwasher. The fittings may not quite, er, fit.

Smaller pipe must be cheaper and easier to install, so why isn't 10mm pipe used for
everything? (In France, it often is!)

Small isn't always beautiful

A bath should fill in five minutes or so. Suppose in the interests of economy you decide
to plumb it in with 10mm pipe. The bath holds about 100 litres, so to fill it in 300 seconds
will require a flow rate of (100 / 300) = 0.33 litres/second. Now, the internal cross-
sectional area of 10mm pipe is about 61 sq.mm, so a 1 metre length of it holds about 61
cubic millimetres, or 61 milli-litres (ml). A flow rate of 0.33 litres/sec therefore means a
water speed of about (0.33 / 61 x10-3) = 5.4 metres/second - about 12 mph. Given
enough pressure you probably could do it, but the roaring noise would frighten children
and small animals, and cavitation damage would mean you'd have to replace the
pipes and fittings after a few years anyway. It's probably a bad idea.

Each size of pipe is intended to carry a specific flow rate, quietly. Cross-sectional area is
what matters here. A simple calculation of volumes shows that, at the maximum
recommended water speed of 2 metres/second, the maximum flow rates are:

Maximum quiet flow rates

Table 4: Quiet flow rates (litres/sec) of standard

pipes

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 10 15 22 28 35 42 54
mm mm mm mm mm mm mm

1.5
0.08 0.22 0.45 0.82 1.3 1.9 3.1
m/sec

2.0
0.1 0.3 0.6 1.1 1.7 2.5 4.2
m/sec

To check the actual flow rate, get a bucket and a watch. A bucket usually holds 2
gallons ( = 16 pints, = 9.1 litres). At a 15mm pipe's maximum flow rate of 0.3 litres/sec, the
bucket will fill in 30 seconds. At a 22mm pipe's maximum flow rate of 0.6 litres/sec, it will
take 15 seconds.

Bath taps and sink taps

If 10mm pipe is not an option for the bath, then what is?

The idea is to choose the pipe sizes so that the water flows fast enough to fill the bath or
the sink in a sensible time without making too much noise. A kitchen sink holds 10 or 12
litres of water. So to fill a 10 litre sink with water moving at 2 m/sec would take 85
seconds using 10mm pipe, 34 seconds with 15mm, 15 seconds with 22mm ... and just 2
seconds with 54mm pipe.

Now, if the sink filled in 2 seconds it wouldn't save much time on the washing up, and
besides, water would splash all over the kitchen. Most people don't mind waiting half a
minute or so for the sink to fill, and that's why kitchen sink taps are designed to be
connected to 15mm pipe.

A bath holds about ten times as much as a sink: 100 to 120 litres. If both the hot and
cold pipes are 22mm, and you run both at once, the flow rate is over 1.2 litres/second,
so the bath fills in less than a minute and a half. Bath taps are designed for 22mm pipe.

If you want to know how to calculate real flow rates in a real system, the method is
given here in Part 2.

Be warned - the numbers I use all refer to copper pipe. If you want to use plastic
pipe you should be aware of the differences. You may find John Cantor's
site interesting.

Copyright © John Hearfield 2007, 2012

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These pages explain how to choose the correct sizes of pipe when plumbing a house,
and why it matters. This section includes a practical worked example. The theory is
explored inpart 1 .

In this section I show how to calculate the flow-rate in a real domestic water-supply
system by using a couple of design tools that link flow-rate to the available head -
the pressure that makes the water move. The worked example starts here . If all you
need is the graph that links flow rate to the rate-of-pressure-drop for standard pipe sizes,
it's here .

But before I design a water supply system for a real house, I should explain how the
apparently impossible calculation problems involving turbulent flow can be quickly and
easily tackled in practice.

How much pressure is needed?

If the water has to move at a couple of metres per second, or thereabouts, how much
pressure is needed?

It's a simple question, but unfortunately there is no simple answer. It depends on what
pipes are fitted, and how long they are. Each case must be individually calculated. But
don't despair - the calculation is very easy.

The main thing to remember about pressure is this:

Pressure supplies the energy to push the water along the pipe. Each bit of pipe resists
the flow. Energy is lost as the water moves along the pipe, so the pressure falls too.
There's a pressure difference between the ends of the pipe.

The longer the pipe, the more energy is lost, and the greater the pressure drop.
The rate of pressure drop (that is, the pressure drop per metre of pipe) depends on the
pipe diameter and the speed of flow, as you would expect.

The design goal is to choose the pipe sizes that will give the flow rates you want. Each
length of pipe wll have a pressure drop along its length. So the aim is to choose pipes
that will drop just enough of the available pressure (from the header tank, or from the

18 | P a g e
mains water supply in the street) to give the required flow rates. This means checking
the pressure drop along each pipe.

Pressure difference calculation

Darcy-Weisbach

One way to find the pressure difference between the ends of a pipe is to use
the Darcy-Weisbach equation I mentioned in part 1. This predicts how much pressure
would be needed to push the water along a pipe at a particular speed. The formula
looks like this:

Here, the pressure difference P needed to achieve a flow velocity v depends on the
length L and diameter D of the pipe as well as the density of the fluid (ρ - about 1,000
kg/m3 for cold water). It also depends on f, a fiddle factor - sorry, "friction factor", which
is included to account for the effects of the Reynolds number. This graph (and its
equation) shows the relationship between Re and f.

The equation includes √f on both sides, and looks impossible to solve. In fact, it was
quite straightforward. The trick is to begin by guessing a value for f (say, 0.01), putting
this value (and Re) in the right-hand side, working out the value of the left-hand side,
and hence finding f. This new value for f is closer to the actual value than the initial
guess, so you plug it back into the right-hand side and do the calculation again . After
a couple of iterations the answer is usually close enough to be useful. (By the way, the

19 | P a g e
friction factor used by American engineers is for some reason four times bigger than this.
But then, most things in America are bigger than they are in England.)

The graph appears to show that the "friction factor" decreases as the Reynolds number
goes up. More speed giving less friction? Hardly likely, is it? In fact, that's not what the
graph is saying. The "friction factor" is purely a measure of how the pipe affects the flow,
and as the water becomes more turbulent the pipe itself plays a smaller part in events.

Example - a kitchen sink

Theory is all very well, but let's see some actual numbers. The kitchen sink is fed by 15mm
pipe. How much pressure will it take to get hot water (at about 60oC, say) moving out of
the tap at 2 metres/second, and is this head achievable?

1. Calculate Reynolds number from water speed, pipe size, density, & viscosity.

2. Look up friction factor f on the graph.

3. Calculate pressure drop from Darcy-Weisbach equation.

Start by calculating the Reynolds number:

Re = Speed x Diameter x (Density / Viscosity)

We know that the speed is to be 2 m/sec, and the internal diameter of 15mm pipe is
13.6mm. From Table 1, (ρ/μ) for water at 60o is about 3.1 x106. Then the Reynolds
number in this case is:

Re = 2 x 13.6 x10-3 x 3.1 x106 = 84,000

near enough. From the graph above, this Re has a "friction factor" f of about 0.019. So in
the pressure-difference equation

we know f (0.019) and v (2 m/s) and ρ (992.1) and D (13.6 mm). For now, assume that
the length L is just 1.0 metre. Then the pressure difference (per metre) needed to get the
water flowing is:

P = 0.019 x 22 x (992.1 / 2) x (1.0 / 13.6 x10-3) = 2,800 N/m2

This means that each metre length of the 15mm pipe must have a pressure difference
of 2,800 N/sq.m. between its ends to push water though it at 2 m/sec. If the pipe is 10m
long, the total pressure difference between the ends of the pipe (that is, the head
required) would be 28,000 N/sq.m. Or, to put it another way, the water will flow at 2
metres/second if the head happens to be exactly 28,000 N/sq.m.

20 | P a g e
If you're more comfortable with pressure expressed as the head in feet, the conversion
factor is:

A head of 1 foot of water ≈ 3,000 N/sq.m.

So 28,000 N/sq.m. is about the same as a head of 9 feet (or 3m) of water. But if the
head is not exactly 9 feet - and in practice, Sod's Law says it won't be - the water will
flow at a different speed! More on this later.

Pressure difference from a graph - the basic design tool

The equations are useful if you ever need to calculate accurately, but in practice it's
easier to check from a graph that what you plan to do will work.

The log-log graph

1 bar
= 100,000
N/sq.m

1 lb/sq.in
= 7,000
N/sq.m

1 foot of water
= 3,000
N/sq.m

7 m. of water
(the minimum water pressure guaranteed in the UK)
= 69,000
N/sq.m

1 Pascal
= 1 N/sq.m

21 | P a g e
This graph shows pressure drop per metre for a given flow rate and pipe size. You'll find
something similar in the relevant British Standard. It was constructed from the pressure-
drop equation and covers water speeds from 2.0 m/sec (at the top) down to 0.2 m/sec,
and is valid for all normal temperatures. It's saying that the pressure drop along a length
of pipe is (nearly) proportional to the square of the flow rate in the pipe.

The graph tells you nearly all you need to know. Use it like this:

1. Decide the flow rate you need (sink: 0.3 litres/sec; bath: 0.5 litres/sec, say).

22 | P a g e
 2. Choose a pipe size that will carry this flow at less than 2m/sec.

3. Use the graph to find the rate of pressure drop, per metre of pipe run.

This tells you the head you will need.

Example - a bathroom sink

A bathroom sink is fed with 15mm pipe and needs a flow rate of 0.3 litres/sec.

From the graph, this means the water speed will be 2 metres per second and the head
required to achieve this flow rate will be 4,000 N/sq.m. (or 1.3 feet height of water) per
metre of pipe. So if the sink is fed from a tank 13 feet above it, the pipe run could have
an (equivalent) length of 10 metres. If the pipe is shorter, the water will flow faster.

Example - 22mm pipe connected to the water main

Suppose that the stop-tap offers a 22mm connection, and that the water pressure here
is 2 bar. Assume a horizontal straight 22mm pipe is connected to the stop-tap. What will
the flow rate be if the pipe is 10m long? What happens if it's 100m long?

From the graph, 10m of 22mm pipe carrying 0.7 litres/sec ( = 2 m/sec water speed) has
a pressure drop of

P = 10 x 2,500 N/sq.m = 25,000 N/sq.m

If a pressure of nearly ten times this (and 2 bar = 200,000 N/sq.m) is applied, the graph
can't predict what would happen. I would guess that the flow rate would exceed 2
litres/sec and the noise level would be scary. This is not a good idea!

However, with 100m of pipe, the 200,000 N/sq.m mains pressure works out at a more
modest 2,000 N/sq.m per metre. The graph says this delivers about 0.6 litres/sec (36
litres/minute) at a water speed of something under 2 m/sec. It would work fine.

Example - a fountain

Suppose that the 10m length of 22mm pipe connected to the stop-tap points vertically
upwards. The 2 bar pressure at the stop-tap will presumably cause water to squirt out of
the top. How high will it go?

The weight of water in the vertical pipe exerts a pressure downwards, towards the stop-
tap, of

Pressure = Length x density x g (N/sq.m)

Pressure = 10 (m) x 1,000 (kg/cu.m) x 9.8 (m/sec/sec) ≈ 100,000 (N/sq.m)

23 | P a g e
This pressure acts downwards, opposing the 200,000 N/sq.m upwards pressure at the
stop-tap. The net upwards pressure is reduced to 100,000 N/sq.m. Over the 10m length,
there is now 10,000 N/sq.m per metre. This is off the graph, as it represents a water
speed of well over 2 metres/sec. It might give a flow rate of about 1.5 litres/sec.

The cross-sectional area of 22mm pipe is 320 sq.mm., so 1.5 litres in 22mm pipe occupies
a length of

(1.5/1,000) / (320 x 10-6) = 4.7 metres

which means that when the water leaves the top of the pipe it is moving at 4.7
metres/sec. How high will it go? The equation I learnt at school relates speed and
distance for a body moving under gravity like this

v2 = u2 - 2 g s

where u and v are the initial and final velocity, s is distance, and g is 9.8 m/sec/sec as
usual. Here u = 4.7 m/sec and v = 0 (because the water stops rising, pauses, then begins
to fall) so

4.72 = 2 x 9.8 x s ... s = 4.72 / (2 x 9.8) = 1.1 metres ( ≈ 3.5 feet).

So at the end of a 10m vertical pipe - that is, at rooftop height, 30 feet in the air - mains
water pressure would still produce a fountain about as high as a child! No wonder
water companies' pipes leak.

What size pipe do you need?

24 | P a g e
How do you go about choosing the correct sizes for all the different pipes in the house?

Here's a simplified sketch of the hot- and cold-water supply system in a two-storey
house. The cold-water header tank in the loft feeds a bath on the first floor, and the
kitchen sink on the ground floor. It also feeds the hot water pipes via the cylinder.

The first step is to sketch the layout and choose the pipe sizes such that the water flows
fast enough to fill the bath and the sink in a sensible time.

Then calculate what will actually happen, and decide whether anything needs to be
changed.

So, here:

 To fill a 10-litre kitchen sink in half a minute, the flow rate of the pipe feeding it
must be close to 0.3 litres/second, and 15mm pipe can probably handle this.

25 | P a g e
  The flow rate for a bath should be higher, but as a single 22mm pipe can
comfortably deliver more than 0.5 litres/second, two 22mm pipes (hot and cold)
will be more than adequate.

This house doesn't have a shower. Showers use about 10 litres per minute - that is, about
0.17 litres/second - so 15mm pipes would be quite big enough if the owner ever
decided to install one. A five-minute shower only uses about 30 litres of hot water. That's
why it's cheaper to shower than to have a bath. It's cheaper still when you share with a
friend, apparently.

Cold water pipes

The design starts with the cold feeds. The kitchen sink needs 0.3 litres/sec, and
according to Table 4 a 15mm pipe will only deliver 0.22 litres/sec at a water speed of
1.5 metres/sec. The choice is, to pay more and use 22mm pipe, or to fit 15mm pipe and
put up with a small amount of extra noise. Which would you go for?

A cautious person might ask, how much more noise? A mountain stream, or Niagara
Falls?

That's easy to answer. Increasing the flow rate by 30% means that the water flows 30%
faster - 2.2 metres/sec instead of 1.5 m/s. The noise level would roughly double. That
shouldn't be a big problem.

The kitchen sink cold feed can therefore be 15mm, at least up to the junction with the
bath cold feed. The pipe from here to the bottom of the cylinder serves two purposes,
though. Someone might be running a bath whilst someone else is downstairs washing
up. What then?

Suppose that the bath cold tap and the kitchen sink cold tap are both running at once,
with 0.3 litres/sec going to the sink downstairs and (say) 0.5 litres/sec going into the
bath. The total flow-rate would be 0.8 litres/sec, and 15mm pipe would complain at
that. Will 22mm pipe do, or should it be 28mm? You might ask how likely is it that both
taps would be on at the same time, and if it did happen, would anyone mind too much
if the cold flow slackened off for a few seconds? Probably not (unless they were having
a shower!) 22mm pipe should be adequate.

Finally, there's the pipe from the header tank to the bottom of the cylinder. This one is
more important than it looks - it not only carries cold water to the taps but also refills the
cylinder as hot water is taken from the top. Water flows through this pipe to every tap in
the house. It would be sensible to make it 28mm, which can carry over a litre per
second.

Hot water pipes

26 | P a g e
The hot-water pipes are easy to size, because the thinking has already been done for
the cold pipes. The kitchen sink will be fed in 15mm from the tee under the bath, and
then in 22mm from the top of the cylinder.

The vent pipe leading from the cylinder to above the header tank should also be 22mm
(as local authority planning laws usually require). This pipe is only there as a safety
measure - if something goes wrong, and the water in the cylinder boils, it can siphon up
safely into the tank instead of bursting the cylinder and ruining all the carpets.

What's the actual flow rate?

It's all very well calculating pipe sizes by assuming a flow rate, but what will actually
happen in a real house in practice? How fast will the water flow out of the kitchen sink
tap? How long will it really take to fill the bath?

It is possible to predict how a real system will behave. In this section I show how to
calculate what will happen in the two-storey house design described earlier. Each step
is explained in some detail in order to make it easier to adapt the calculation to the
different problem you may be trying to solve.

Pipes often go round corners

The pressure driving the water along the pipes is the head. For the bath, this is 3 metres
(say), and for the kitchen sink on the floor below it's 5 metres (say). This pressure is
opposed by the friction losses in the pipes, which can be thought of as the pressure-
difference-per-metre needed to push the water along at the flow rate you want.
The log-log graph can be used to find the flow rate in a pipe run when the head is
known.

There is one small difficulty. Real pipe goes round corners, and through tees, and valves,
and other fittings. Each fitting creates its own bit of turbulence and absorbs some
energy. How can this be taken into account?

Quite easily, as it happens. In just the same way that a length of straight pipe needs a
pressure difference to push water through it, so does an elbow, or a valve. The pressure
difference required across a 15mm elbow to move water though it at, say, 0.2 litres/sec
can be measured. Whatever this number is, it must be the same as the pressure
difference required to move water through some length of straight 15mm pipe at the
same speed. In fact, this equivalent length is about 0.4 metres for a 15mm elbow. So the
pressure drop in the elbow can be included by pretending that the 15mm pipe is really
straight, but 0.4 metres longer than it actually is. The "equivalent lengths" of some
common fittings are listed below.

Fittings: equivalent length

27 | P a g e
Table 5: The equivalent lengths (in metres) of some
standard fittings

Tee: Tee: into Tee: from

Elbow
Pipe through branch branch
size

15
0.4 0.05 0.7 0.6
mm

22
0.6 0.09 1.1 1.0
mm

28
0.9 0.12 1.6 1.4
mm

One common fitting that doesn't appear in the table is the shower head. Its function is
to take the stream of water flowing in a 15mm pipe and split it into many little streams,
each about 1mm in diameter. This process takes a lot of energy. In terms of equivalent
pipe length, a shower head might represent as much as 10-20 metres of 15mm, or even
more, and this has a serious impact on flow-rate. That's why many people opt for a
pumped shower, or one run directly from mains pressure via a combi boiler.

Example - the kitchen sink feed from the bathroom

The 15mm pipes run under the bathroom floor, then down to the ground floor, along to
the sink, then up again to the taps.

There are 5 elbows (right-angle bends) in each pipe. According to Table 5, each elbow
causes the same pressure drop as 0.4 metres of 15mm pipe. So the elbows represent 5 x
0.4m = 2m of pipe. The pipes themselves are about 7m long, so the total equivalent
length of each one is 7m + 2m = 9m of pipe.

Then from the log-log graph, to achieve a water flow rate of 0.3 litres/second, the head
would have to be 9m x 4,000 N/sq.m = 36,000 N/sq.m.

Pipes are different sizes, too

Suppose someone turns on the cold tap at the kitchen sink. What will happen?

Water will begin to flow out of the header tank, down the 28mm pipe to the cylinder,
along the 22mm pipe to the bath, then down the 15mm pipe to the sink. How fast it

28 | P a g e
flows depends on the head and the opposing frictional pressure drop. The head is
known to be 5m, but the opposing frictional loss must be calculated.

The problem is that each different pipe size offers a different resistance to the same flow
rate. What's needed is some way of expressing these different resistances in some
common unit, so that they can be just added together.

A clue comes from the log-log graph. The lines are (nearly) parallel. This means that the
rate of pressure drop (RPD) for 22mm pipe (say) is always some fraction of that for
15mm pipe, at the same flow rate.

At 0.05 litres/sec, 15mm pipe has a RPD of about 150 N/sq.m/m, whilst for 22mm RPD is
just 20 N/sq.m/m - about seven times smaller.

(RPD for 15mm pipe) / (RPD for 22mm pipe) = 7 / 1

And at 0.2 litres/sec the figures are 1900 and 270 - again, a ratio of about 7 to 1. So to
get the same flow rate, 15mm pipe needs seven times the pressure difference that
22mm needs!

1m of 15mm pipe behaves like 7m of 22mm pipe.

These figures aren't exact, but they're near enough to be useful in the real world.

1m of 22mm pipe behaves like (1/7)m - 0.13m - of 15mm pipe.

The idea can be extended to the other pipe sizes. The table below shows the length of
each standard size pipe that is equivalentto a 1 metre length of 15mm pipe. It says, for
example, that just 3.5cm of 28mm pipe has the same pressure drop as 1m of 15mm
pipe.

Table 6: The lengths (in metres) of standard

pipe sizes equivalent to 1m of 15mm

10 15 22 28 35 42 54
mm mm mm mm mm mm mm

7 1.0 0.13 0.035 0.012 0.0047 0.0013

Flow rate calculations

So, back at the sink...

What is the flow rate out of the kitchen cold tap?

The question was, how fast will water come out of the cold tap at the kitchen sink?

29 | P a g e
 1. Work out the equivalent length of the 15mm section.

2. Work out the equivalent lengths of the 22mm and the 28mm sections.

3. Convert the 22mm and 28mm lengths to their equivalent 15mm length.

4. Add all the lengths of 15mm equivalent together.

5. Work out the total pressure drop (from head, ρ, g).

6. Find the average rate of pressure drop (divide by pipe length).

7. Look up the corresponding flow rate on the log-log graph.

The 15mm section runs from the kitchen tap itself up to the tee with the bath tap. It is
about 7m long with five elbows, so it has an equivalent length of

[15mm actual] = 7.0m (the pipe) + (5 x 0.4m) (the elbows) = 9.0m.

The 22mm section includes two tees, and the pipe itself. If the 22mm pipe is (say) 3.5m
long, this represents an equivalent length of

[22mm actual] = 3.5m (the pipe) + (0.09m + 1.1m) (the tees: 1 in, 1 through) = 4.7m.

[Convert 22mm actual --> 15mm equivalent] = 4.7m x 0.13 = 0.6m.

The 28mm pipe is 6m long, with two elbows, giving an equivalent length of

[28mm actual] = 6.0m (the pipe) + (2 x 0.9m) (the elbows) = 7.8m.

[Convert 28mm actual --> 15mm equivalent] = 7.8m x 0.035 = 0.3m.

So the total equivalent length of 15mm pipe is:

9.0m (15mm) + 0.6m (22mm) + 0.3m (28mm) = 9.9m.

Now, the head is 5m, and we know that:

Pressure = Length x Density x g

so putting in numbers for density and g, the pressure at the kitchen tap will be:

5 [m.of water] x 1,000 [kg/m3] x 9.8 [m/sec2] = 49,000 N/sq.m

This pressure drop is shared out along the pipe run - that is, along the 9.9m equivalent
length of 15mm - which means the average rate of pressure drop is

49,000 / 9.9 = 5,000 N/sq.m per metre

... 0.35 litres/sec!

30 | P a g e
more or less. From the log-log graph, 15mm pipe with a RPD of 5,000 N/sq.m per metre
has a flow rate of about 0.35 litres/second. This is what will come out of the tap, and
more by luck than by skilful design, it's close to the 0.3 litres/second that it should be.

But is this figure true? Cross-check the result by working backwards. Breaking it down,
the answer says that the 9m of real 15mm pipe accounts for (9 x 5,000) = 45,000 of the
49,000 N/sq.m of available pressure, the 22mm length takes (0.6 x 5,000) = 3,000 N/sq.m,
and the 28mm needs (0.3 x 5,000) = 1,500 N/sq.m. This adds up to 49,500, which is close
enough to the expected figure of 49,000. This is supposed to be engineering, not
physics.

Then the flow rate in the actual 4.6m of 22mm pipe at its RPD of (3,000 / 4.6m) = 652
N/sq.m per metre is, from the log-log graph, about 0.35 litres/second. And for the
actual 7.8m of 28mm at its RPD of (1,500 / 7.8) = 192 N/sq.m per metre, the flow is once
again 0.35 litres/second. Each pipe is carrying the same flow rate, as it should do. So the
kitchen sink tap really willdeliver 0.35 litres/second.

What if the pipes are too noisy?

In a different design - perhaps one with with fatter pipes, or fewer elbows, or a larger
head - the calculation might have predicted a much higher flow rate. In that case you
would expect the pipes to be noisy when the water is running. To make them quieter,
the water has to be slowed down, and this is actually very easy to do. Any competent
plumber installing a system will have included valves at strategic points, so that sections
of the system can be isolated - when, for example, you need to change a tap washer.

All you have to do is find the right valve and turn it down a bit. The extra resistance this
adds will reduce the flow rate to a more sensible value. Halving the flow rate would
reduce the noise by a factor of four.

Running a bath

What is the flow rate out of the bath cold tap?

This calculation is a bit more complicated, because it involves both the hot and cold
water pipes in the two-storey housesketched above. The approach is exactly the same:
find the equivalent lengths, convert them to the same size pipe, add them up, find
the pressure drop per metre, look up the corresponding flow rate.

Cold feed only: Think about the cold water first. The 22mm pipe from the tap is 3.5m
long and includes two tees. It has an apparent length of:

[22mm actual] = 3.5m + (1.1m + 1.0m) = 5.6m.

Similarly, the apparent length of the 28mm pipe is:

31 | P a g e
[28mm actual] = 6.0m + (2 x 0.9m) = 7.8m.

Since there is no 15mm pipe involved in the runs to the bath, it seems silly to convert
these lengths to their equivalent 15mm lengths, then add them together, then convert
them back again to 22mm. Instead, I'll simply convert the 28mm length to its equivalent
22mm value, using the figures in Table 6:

[28mm actual --> 22mm equivalent] = 7.8m x (0.035 / 0.13) = 2.1m.

Then the total equivalent length of 22mm is:

5.6m + 2.1m = 7.7m.

The head is 3m, which corresponds to a pressure of:

3 [m.of water] x 1,000 [kg/m3] x 9.8 [m/sec2] = 29,400 N/sq.m

So the average rate of pressure drop is:

29,400 / 7.7 = 3,800 N/sq.m per metre

... 0.9 litres/sec!

which according to the log-log graph means a (rather noisy) flow rate of close to 0.9
litres/second for a cold bath, rather than the 0.5 litres/second one might have hoped
for. Still, things will change when the hot tap is running too.

Hot feed only: Now for the hot water. The hot pipe is all 22mm, which makes it slightly
easier. The pipe run to the top of the cylinder is (let's say) 6m long, and includes two
tees and three elbows. So:

[Hot: 22mm actual] = 6m + (1.1m + 1.0m + [3 x 0.6m]) = 9.9m.

However, the hot water leaving the cylinder is replaced by cold water flowing from the
header tank. The cylinder itself is only a kind of fitting, and it too has resistance, just like
an elbow. The resistance of the whole circuit must be calculated.

The 22mm run is only 1m or so, plus a tee and an elbow. The cylinder's resistance is
equivalent to about 1.6m of 22mm pipe. Adding these up gives:

[Cold: 22mm actual] = 1m + (1.0m + 0.6m + 1.6m) = 4.2m.

Finally, there's the 28mm pipe from the header tank. I've already calculated that this is
7.8m (actual) and 2.1m (22mm equivalent), so the total equivalent length of 22mm
pipe in this circuit is:

9.9m + 4.2m + 2.1m = 16.2m.

32 | P a g e
The head is still 3m, or 29,400 N/sq.m, so the average rate of pressure drop is

29,400 / 16.2 = 1,800 N/sq.m per metre

which the log-log graph says represents close to 0.6 litres/second for a hot bath - pretty
much what it should be. The flow rate from the hot tap is less than from the cold tap
because of the resistance of all the extra pipe this water has to flow through.

Both hot and cold: Most people turn on both taps when they are running a bath. What
happens then? It's a more difficult problem, because now the 28mm pipe from the
header tank is carrying cold water both to the bath and to the bottom of the cylinder.
A higher flow rate means a greater resistance. How much greater? That depends on
the flow rate it's carrying, and that in turn depends on its resistance!

Breaking this circle demands a little algebra, since there are now two unknown (and
inter-dependent) quantities: the flow rates from each of the bath taps. I don't know yet
what they are, so I'll call the flow rate out of the hot tap H litres/sec, and that from the
cold tap C litres/sec.

Now, the hot water circuit runs from the tee (with the 28mm pipe) up through the
cylinder, down and along to the hot tap. It has an equivalent length of (9.9m + 4.2m) =
14.1m. This pipe run is carrying H litres/sec.

Similarly, the effective length of the cold water circuit, from the cold tap to the same
junction, is 5.6m. This pipe run is carrying C litres/sec.

And the 28mm pipe, with an effective length of 7.8m (or 2.1m of 22mm equivalent), has
to carry (H + C) litres/sec.

I know that H and C must be less than 0.6 and 0.9 litres/sec respectively, because those
are the flow rates with only one tap open. The flow rates with both taps open must be
smaller, because the hot and cold flows share space in the 28mm pipe, and it will offer
greater resistance to the flow, so (for now) guess that H = 0.5 litres/sec. From the graph,
this implies a Rate of Pressure Drop (RPD) of 1,400 N/sq.m per metre.

The effective length of the pipes carrying just hot water is 14.1m. The total pressure drop
along these pipes would then be (14.1 x 1,400) = 19,700 N/sq.m. The head is 29,400
N/sq.m, so the pressure difference between the water surface in the header tank and
the junction of the hot and cold circuits - at the tee near the bottom of the cylinder -
would be (29,400 N/sq.m - 19,700 N/sq.m) = 9,700 N/sq.m. I'll come back to this figure in
a moment.

But the same pressure of 19,700 N/sq.m that drives the hot water flow is driving the cold
water flow too. The effective length of the pipes carrying just cold water is 5.6m, so the

33 | P a g e
RPD for the cold-water pipes is (19,700 / 5.6) = 3,500 N/sq.m per metre, and
the graph says that this implies a flow rate of about C = 0.82 litres/sec.

My original guess was that H was 0.5 litres/sec, and this guess resulted in a predicted
value for C of 0.82 litres/sec. In other words, C is 1.64 times bigger than H. But this ratio
depends only on the pipe layout. It's independent of the actual values of Hand C.
Whatever the real figures are, this ratio will stay the same.

If my original guess that H was 0.5 litres/sec had been correct, then the combined flow
in the 28mm pipe would have been (0.5 + 0.82) = 1.32 litres/sec. The graph says that the
RPD of 28mm pipe carrying 1.32 litres/sec is about 2,700 N/sq.m per metre, so the total
pressure drop along its effective length of 7.8m is (2,700 x 7.8) = 21,000 N/sq.m.

But I have already calculated that if H really had been 0.5 litres/sec, the pressure drop
along the 28mm pipe would have been 9,700 N/sq.m - only half as much. The original
guess was plainly wrong! So how can the problem be solved?

A Useful Approximation

The straight-line log-log graph could also be written as a power law.

For 15mm pipe, it would be:

RPD =
35,000 x FR1.83

For 22mm pipe, it would be:

RPD =
5,000 x FR1.85

The relationship between the two quantities of interest - flow rate and pressure drop - is
extremely complex, but fortunately it can be approximated by a rather simple formula:

Rate of Pressure Drop (RPD) = A x (Flow Rate)2 + B

- where A and B are constants that depend only on pipe size. I give values for A and B
in the table below.

Table 7: Values of constants A and B in the Useful

Approximation

Pipe
10mm 15mm 22mm 28mm 35mm 42mm 54mm
size

A 400,000 44,000 5,300 1,400 450 160 40

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B 100 70 40 30 18 20 14

The approximation is accurate when the pipe is carrying a flow rate of between 30%
and 100% of its maximum capacity.

Running the bath

Here is a simplified diagram showing only the pipe runs to the hot and cold bathtaps.
Water is flowing from both taps.

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The cold water feed pipe is 5.6 metres long and carrying Clitres/second. The hot water
pipe is 14.1 metres long and carries Hlitres/sec. The common feed, carrying cold water
to the tap and also into the bottom of the cylinder - that is, (C + H) litres/sec - is 7.8
metres long, from the header tank to the tee.

Now, from the Useful Approximation, the total pressure difference between the ends of
a pipe is

Pressure drop in pipe = Length x [A x (Flow Rate)2 + B]

The hot and cold pipes are both fed from the common pipe, and both end in open
taps. The pressure difference between the common point and each tap must be the
same. So by applying the formula, doing a bit of algebra, and discarding terms that are
too small to matter, we get a relationship between the flow rates that just depends on
pipe lengths:

This is really just a more formal way of expressing the idea that the hot and cold flow
rates will always bear the same ratio to each other. But we also know that, for the
whole system:

Head = (Pressure drop in common pipe) + (Pressure drop in hot [or cold] pipe)

and this, with a bit of algebra, can be made to yield an expression for the actual hot or
cold flow rate in terms of numbers we already know! To make the equation as general
as possible, I have used the symbols Lc and Lh to stand for the lengths of the cold and
hot pipe runs respectively, and L28 to mean the length of the common 28mm pipe. For
the cold flow rate, C, the equation is:

This equation looks forbiddingly complex, but finding a value for C is simply a matter of
substituting known numbers for all the variables and calculating the answer. The head is
29,400 N/sq.m., Lc is 5.6m., and Lh is 14.1m. It's important that all the lengths be
expressed in the same units, so L28 is 2.1m (of 22mm equivalent) rather than the actual
figure of 7.8m. Finally, from Table 7, the constants for 22mm pipe are A = 5,300 and B =
40.

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The answer I got was C2 = 0.49 litres/second, so C = 0.7 litres/second. And since (C /
H)2 = (14.1 / 5.6), I calculate that H = 0.44 litres/second.

The answer can be checked by working out the individual pressure drops using the
Useful Approximation. In the hot and cold pipes:

Cold pipe: Pressure drop = 5.6m x [5,300 x (0.7)2 + 40] = 14,800 N/sq.m

Hot pipe: Pressure drop = 14.1m x [5,300 x (0.44)2 + 40] = 15,000 N/sq.m

which is near enough the same, as it should be, and in the common pipe,

Common pipe: Pressure drop = 2.1m x [5,300 x (0.7 + 0.44)2 + 40] = 14,500 N/sq.m

making a total of about 29,500 N/sq.m. The actual head is 29,400 N/sq.m. I think the
conclusion is that the sums really do add up. The method works.

If you want another look at the theoretical background to all this, you'll find it here in
Part 1.

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