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Minimum Gallons per Minute

Scott Cohen
Scott Cohen Member Posts: 1
in THE MAIN WALL
I rent in MA. Is there a minimum gallons/min requirement for the tankless boiler system (baseboard heating)
If not, what is the average amount of hot water (Temp and gpm) that I could expect from my faucet?

Comments

  • Brad White_9
    Brad White_9 Member Posts: 2,440
    I could not find

    a written minimum domestic flow rate in the Mass. Plumbing code but there are of course fixture maximums (shower heads you can imagine, at 3.0 gpm). Code language is general in that pressure and flow have to be adequate for proper operation (paraphrasing of course).

    My plumbing engineer says he would expect to see 1.5 to 2.0 GPM at a faucet. Go get a gallon jug and a stopwatch or one with a second-hand and time it. What are you getting?

    City of Boston Sanitary Code has other requirements such as temperature (minimum and maximum). Having been a landlord here, only tenants know the rules, the landlords have to get subpeonas.

    :)
  • Brad White_9
    Brad White_9 Member Posts: 2,440
    Correction- Found it!

    Scott, Hi

    I did find it in another copy of the code; mine had several missing pages which I did not know until now. Time for a new one!

    In Mass.:
    248 CMR 10.14 Table 4 (Minimum Pressure and Flow Rates)

    Sink faucets both 3/8" and 1/2" have a minimum required pressure under flow of 8 psi and a flow rate of 4.5 GPM (which seems extraordinarily high, especially at that residual pressure).

    By comparison a bathtub faucet is 6 gpm and an "ordinary basin faucet" is 2 gpm.

    Hope this helps.
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