Why bench homes see this most
City water systems have to deliver adequate pressure to the highest homes on the line. Homes lower down, or those on the bench where supply pressure is already strong, can receive far more than they need — we routinely measure well above the safe limit in Layton Hills, the Kaysville East Bench, and along Bountiful Boulevard.
That is what the pressure-reducing valve at your service entrance is for. After twenty to twenty-five years, most of them stop reducing anything.
What high pressure breaks
It does not fail all at once. It shortens the life of everything at the same time.
- Toilet fill valves that run intermittently through the night
- Braided washing machine hoses and quarter-inch ice maker lines
- Faucet and shower cartridges that drip within a year of replacement
- Water heater relief valves that weep
- Water hammer — the bang in the wall when an appliance valve closes
How to test it yourself
Buy a pressure gauge with a hose fitting from any hardware store. Thread it onto an outside hose bib with everything in the house off, and read it.
Between 50 and 70 psi is healthy. Above 80 psi is over code in most jurisdictions and is actively damaging your plumbing. If the gauge sits fine during the day but climbs overnight, you have thermal expansion with no expansion tank — a separate problem worth fixing.
The fix
A new pressure-reducing valve, properly set, is a straightforward job at the service entrance. Where thermal expansion is the issue, an expansion tank at the water heater handles it.
It is the least glamorous repair in the house and one of the highest-return: it stops the parade of small failures that otherwise brings a plumber back every few months.