The August pattern
Every year, the same call: the shower was fine in May, now it’s a trickle.
Nothing has changed in the apartment. What’s changed is that every villa on the urbanisation is filling a pool, running irrigation, and doing four loads of washing a day for guests. The supply that serves the whole development is doing several times the work it did in spring.
That’s a shared-supply problem, and no plumber can fix it inside your flat.
How to tell whether it’s yours or theirs
One question sorts it: is it one tap, or all of them?
One outlet slow, others fine. That’s yours. Usually a scaled cartridge, a partly closed isolation valve under the sink, or scale in the spout. Cheap and fixable.
Everything slow, hot and cold the same. That’s upstream — the supply, a pressure-reducing valve, or the building. Not something a new shower head will solve.
Hot slow, cold fine, or the reverse. That’s a valve or a blockage on one side, not a pressure problem at all.
The thing people replace that doesn’t help
Shower heads. A wider head with more holes doesn’t create pressure, it just spreads the same flow thinner — which often makes it feel weaker.
If the flow at the outlet is genuinely low, find out why before buying anything. Greg carries a pressure gauge and measures at the outlet, then works back through the stop tap and any reducing valve. That takes minutes and tells you which of the three causes you’re dealing with.
When it is genuinely your installation
Two things on this coast cause a real, permanent drop:
A pressure-reducing valve set too low. Common in newer developments, sometimes set at 2 bar when the property is happiest at 3. It’s adjustable, and it’s a small job.
Scale in the pipe. Hard water narrows a pipe over years. It’s gradual, so you notice the change only in comparison — usually when someone visits and comments.
Neither is fixed by a new shower.
What to do about it
If it’s shared supply in August, the honest answer is that it will improve in September. What you can do is make sure the property is getting the full pressure it’s entitled to: check the stop tap is fully open, check the reducing valve setting, and clear any scale at the outlets.
That’s an hour’s work and it’s the difference between a shower that’s usable in the busy month and one that isn’t.
Greg covers the coast from San Pedro de Alcántara to Benalmádena and knows which urbanisations have the August problem. Send a photo of your stop tap and any valve you can see, and he’ll tell you what’s worth checking.
