New stopcock causes reduced flow and new leak?

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Bit of a long saga*, but today the water company came out and fitted a new stopcock at the roadside, because they said the old one might be leaking. The chap said it would be much better to have a new stopcock anyway because the new kind are much easier to turn on/off than the old ones.

Anyway, the new one is plastic with a long T bar handle that sticks up so you can reach down to operate it. So far so good.

But as soon as they'd fitted it, we noticed a significant loss of flow in the house. The pressure seems OK. But as soon as you turn on more than 1 tap at a time, the flow reduces a lot. For example if the kitchen tap is on, and someone also flushes the toilet downstairs, then in the upstairs sink there is literally no water coming out. Not even a dribble. And having a shower upstairs we've lost our lovely powerful shower :(

Anyway, this evening we had the dishwasher on, and I was also running a bath downstairs for the kids, when I noticed water pooling on the kitchen floor. Traced it to the water filter housing under the kitchen sink. Very strange, that's never leaked before. Turned off the supply, took it apart, all looks fine. Changed the cartridge for good measure. Put it back together. Tried again, still leaks.

Turn off the bath. Try again. No leak. Turn on the bath again. No leak. Turn on dishwasher and bath. No leak. So now nothing's leaking but I'm wondering what he hell happened. Seems like turning off the bath in the other room was the thing that stopped the leak?? Is it a pressure spike of some kind? Why would a leak occur when water is being drawn from somewhere else, surely there should be less pressure at that time?

Anyone have any ideas? Thanks.
 
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Have you checked the stop cock ,to see if it is fully open ?
Bath running / not running ,and water leak on filter , probably purely a coincidence ,and not related.
 
Have you checked the stop cock ,to see if it is fully open ?

Yes it's fully open.

Bath running / not running ,and water leak on filter , probably purely a coincidence ,and not related.

Strange though, right? That water filter hasn't leaked for the past 8 years since we installed it. Suddenly leaks today. I try a few things and it still leaks. Then I turn the bath off and right away it stops leaking... could be a co-incidence but why did it leak and why has it stopped now? It has now been bone dry again for the past few hours... mystery!
 
Just in case anyone was wondering, I managed to figure this out, it was some kind of airlock. The water company told me to turn the internal stopcock fully off and then fully on again and everything went back to normal. They said this was actually fairly common, although they weren't really able to explain why it happens!
 
You have a dodgy stopcock. I have never heard of an airlock on domestic mains water ,let alone one that can be
" Cured" by turning a stopcock off and on.
 
Could be so. I need to get it changed anyway, it's on an ancient lead pipe and is slightly weeping water.
Anyway, I thought it was interesting that the water company team knew right away what it was and what I needed to do, so it is a known phenomenon to them!
 
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