low water volume

[Tim1]

First time ever on a forum!
We have a house on its own well with low water volume. The pressure switch is set to come on at 48 lbs, turn off at 68 lbs. The pressure tank is an 85 gallon unit set to 46 lbs. From the tank the whole house was 1/2" copper. I'm changing the main lines, cold first, from the 1/2" copper to 3/4" pex a little each day so we have water every night. We now have even less volume from every tap since I started this project....The cold lines are now finished with 3/4" pex running to within a few feet of each tap, from there its back to 1/2". Water volume is still down from when I started and I don't understand why or how to correct it. I seem to be going backwards. The problem of water volume dropping when more than one tap is on has been resolved. Is there something I missed or did wrong? I"m reluctant to start the hot water lines in case I further reduce the volume! Thanks.

[Speedbump]

I do not use Pex but do know that it's ID is smaller than copper and PVC. So if going from 1/2" copper (which is too small for a trunkline already) to 3/4" Pex, you probably haven't made much of a difference. I would recommend 1" Pex. Then you will see a difference in volume. That is if the well can keep up with demand.

[akaothermick]

Copper is a better quality system and changing to Pex is a downgrade, Pex fittings are even smaller bore than the Pex tubing itself, the only advantage of Pex is that nobody steals it to sell for scrap money, it is also much cheaper and the unskilled can install it, increasing the bore size like Speedbump recommends is advised. If you have a whole house filter, change its filter.

[Tim1]

Thanks for your responses. We don't have a whole house filter yet. I'm looking for a specific type, mostly for turbidity. I did try to find 1" pex for the main run but couldn't find any. I also was concerned about the pex connectors being smaller so I measured the difference between the inside of 1/2" copper and pex fittings. Pex is 1/16" bigger. (that's not much, but is bigger!) I should mention, originally the water came out of the pressure tank through two 1/2" pex 90 deg. and one straight pex fittings before going to copper. That would restrict the flow right from the start. Now its 3/4" pex without any fittings till it reaches the first branch. At the hot water tank the copper went to 1/2" pex with three 90 deg. fittings going in and two 90 deg. going out before going back to copper. That would effect the hot water side of the system which I haven't changed yet. So with that in mind I still don't understand why the volume is down, even when I was only half finished the cold water run. Does anyone have any ideas as to why the low volume or should I bite the bullet and put 3/4" copper for the main run?

[Speedbump]

Larger diameter means more volume and more volume means more pressure.