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Increasing Hot Water Pressure
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Strange this thread has been resurrected. As I said in post #2 I have this problem in one bathroom – our en-suite.
To elaborate, this bathroom is the other side of a big house to the water tank and the HW supply was poor. However as we have an electric shower we could live with the problem; we have a jacuzzi bath in another bathroom that my wife prefers anyway. The water supply in the other 2 upstairs bathrooms was adequate – but not great.
Well I finally succumbed to pressure(pun intended) from wife and have just had the en-suite bathroom completely re-fitted; this entailed fitting new ceramic mixer taps to the bath and basin. We now have nothing more than a trickle of HW from both taps!! – totally inadequate.
The plumber said this happens a lot as the diameter of the internal pipes in the taps and aperture restrict the flow; the cold water pressure(mains) from the same taps is excellent.
Anyway this week we are having a pump fitted to the hot water supply to this bathroom. It apparently just switches on when hot water is demanded.
As said earlier I am slightly concerned about the noise and vibration of the pump when running but I will update this thread when it is finished.0 -
I for one will be interested in the outcome as having had a bathroom refitted recently we can no longer have a shower. No problem with lack of hot water it is just that the mains pressure cold is too much to let it through - apparently.
The guys were going to install a pump initially but felt it would be necessary as my old shower worked ok.
There is no chance of moving my HWT so a pump it looks like it will have to be. If I can ever get the bathroom mob to come back. Their after sales service is nothing short of appalling.
The phrase "we will call you back" obviously means something different to them.We all evolve - get on with it0 -
I for one will be interested in the outcome as having had a bathroom refitted recently we can no longer have a shower. There is no chance of moving my HWT so a pump it looks like it will have to be. If I can ever get the bathroom mob to come back. Their after sales service is nothing short of appalling.
Just a point - it is not the Hot Water Tank that needs to be raised but the cold water header tank that is normally in the attic.(I made a mistake in post#2 as I meant to put 'header tank' - I have corrected that post.)
The problem is that can be a big undertaking and still might not work!!
Will let you know about pump - provided my plumber comes as he promised.0 -
I was going to go down the pump way but decided against it as noise and also the power of the water the lads may empty the tank everytime they have a shower. also. If they have a shower late night early morning they will wake the house up.
The hot water runs from the tank back u into the loft. Pipes well lagged. back to the shower that has a cold suply from the header tank. This is in 22mm pipe until it reachesthe mixer tap it then reduces to 18mm input. I also took the filters out of the mixer tapes. to help flow even more. i am more than happy it manages to run a shower head and shower bar at the same time although a little pressure is lost to both.
I even timed filling a bucket to see what shower head would give least resistance. If I had no shower head just let the water run out the pipe the bucket filled twice as fast.The measure of love is love without measure0 -
Hey guys.
Thanks for all the responses, didnt realise they would come so quick.
I currently have a header tank (i presume this is the cold water feed) in th eloft which is 2.3 meters above the floor height.
The cold water pressure seems fine for both the kitchen and the bathroom. Also when i was cleaningsing my radiator top up tank i realised the pressure seemed ok.
The H/W cylinder (which is in my bedroom) , is raised by about 70cm of the floor (bottom of the tank). I seem to have the same problem at kitchen level.
Today i have been reading around electric pumps. I am considering having one installed however their are two issues:
1: again the noise and vibration siuation is becoming an issue. (The tank is mounted on a box (dont know what is under it)).
2: In some areas of the house (mainly to and from the water cylinder and the boilers they use the thick 22mm copper pipe. However in the new house fashion they use the thinner plastic pipes (not sure of the mm).
Time to call a engineer to do the annual service and steal some ideas through polite convo lol.
To see diagram click here0 -
I assume I have to get a pump as I have mains pressure cold water, it doesn't come form a tank.
Hope the pump does the trick for youWe all evolve - get on with it0 -
I assume I have to get a pump as I have mains pressure cold water, it doesn't come form a tank.
Hope the pump does the trick for you
I presume that means the pump is the way forward..
Ok i have just found another variable to the equasion. H/W tank capacity..
I know its been mentioned before but, thinking their is only me and the Mrs, we couldnt realistically empty the water tank.
I have just spoken to the local plumbing merchants (local to where i work in bradford, their are 5 large ones within 3 mins of each other) They have reccomended pumps of either 2.4 bar (£232 ex VAT) or 3.6 bar (£248 ex VAT ). From my readings and what people have mentioned is that over kill?
Also he mentioned he would reccomend a minimum of 50 Gallon tank, but ideally 100Gallon, he also mentioned that most houses have 25 Gallons.
Is this correct, if so how would you know its capacity?0 -
It was easy for us to take another feed from the header tank for the cold side of the shower. I think that when we looked you could get to bore sizes for input to a mixer shower? We went for the biggest we could. We do have a small hot water cylinder and the header tank is about 3 foot cubed? Not sure waht volume.
Cardew.
You do have a good head of water I can't understand why the pressure is not upto it?
As regard the pump I supose you could box it in and mount it on some form of vibration mat. Although this will not help noise transfer down pipes. It could help if you clipped the pipe with a clip with some form of rubber to help take vibration out the pipe?The measure of love is love without measure0 -
Cardew.
You do have a good head of water I can't understand why the pressure is not upto it?
As regard the pump I supose you could box it in and mount it on some form of vibration mat. Although this will not help noise transfer down pipes. It could help if you clipped the pipe with a clip with some form of rubber to help take vibration out the pipe?
John,
The problem as I said earlier is that the bathroom in question is a long way from the Header and HW tanks and the pressure wasn't good before the bathroom renovation because of the length of pipe.
With the new taps with smaller internal pipes and aperture it is much worse.
I will see what the vibration is like after the pump is fitted, but will take every step when installing it to minimise it.0 -
Well I have had the pump fitted and it is a resounding success! HW pressure is fine and in fact the plumber felt it wise to restrict the flow to the taps a little.
The pump the plumber fitted is a Slamander RGP 40
See http://www.salamanderpumps.co.uk/Products/Right.htm#rgp
The RGP40 is at the bottom of the page and you will note it states it is "extremely quiet"
It is certainly much quieter than I feared, although it can be heard running. Fortunately mine is in an airing cupboard so it isn't a problem.
The problem I feared most - vibration - is not a problem at all. The pump is 'free standing' on the supplied rubber mounts(although it could be bolted to the floor if required) and the HW pipes connect to the pump via flexible anti-vibration(AV) couplings that can be seen in this brochure:
http://www.salamanderpumps.co.uk/Download/brochure.pdf
The pump is connected to the electrical supply with a 13 amp plug.
As an aside, I found out why my HW water pressure has always been poor in our en-suite bathroom.(although it got far worse after this bathroom was refurbished.)
I had the house built 20 years ago and agreed with the builder some changes to the upstairs layout of 2 of the en-suite bathrooms during building. I can only think the builder forgot to tell the plumber of these changes until it was too late.
I have just found out that the HW supply pipes to our en-suite(and a shower in another en-suite) are routed up into the attic, across the attic and down into these 2 bathrooms. I hadn’t noticed the pipes because the attic is boarded and the pipes were under this boarding and not visible.
So not only has this given excellent HW pressure in our bathroom, but the other en-suite has effectively a power shower and is now the best shower in the property.
I haven’t got the final bill yet but the pumps cost about £160 on the internet, but I wish I had it fitted years ago.
Edited to add - It does of course have a pressure switch so the pump only runs when Hot water is demanded0
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