No pressure from new bath taps

Apreciar

I have just fitted a new bath and taps in my bathroom. The taps are fed from the water tank in the loft and from the hot water tank. There is barely a dribble when tured on and the flow does not change if its set to hot or cold or somewhere in between.

The information for the taps is as follows, it states a flow for 0.2 bar so I would have thought the problem is not the taps.

Any help would be appreciated.

features

Colour: Chrome Finish
Fixings included: Yes
Warranty/guarantee details: Guaranteed for 5 years (2 years parts and labour, remaining 3 years parts only)
Water Consumption: 9.7 litres per minute at 0.2 bar (basin mixer) 12.5 litres per minute at 0.2 bar (bath/shower mixer)
Category: Basin Taps
Category: One Hole Basin Taps
Style: Valencia
additional information

• Chrome effect basin mixer tap and chrome effect bath filler tap
• Includes pop-up basin waste and chrome effect pop-up bath waste
• Minimum working pressure 0.3 bar

Wookey

Rule of thumb is every .1 bar = 1 metre in distance from the shower outlet to the bottom of your water tank, your tap specs say .3 bar needed as min working pressure. Your water tank will probably need to be about 1.5m/2m above the ceiling in your roofspace to achieve min working pressure, assuming a first floor bathroom within a house.

Apreciar

Wookey wrote: »

Rule of thumb is every .1 bar = 1 metre in distance from the shower outlet to the bottom of your water tank, your tap specs say .3 bar needed as min working pressure. Your water tank will probably need to be about 1.5m/2m above the ceiling in your roofspace to achieve min working pressure, assuming a first floor bathroom within a house.

The house is a normal detached with the tank in the loft but certainly not 1.5m above the floor level in the loft.

Is there any way around the problem, are there taps that dont need this much pressure that I could fit.

vaio

add in some more for pipework losses and I'd say if you want to keep the taps then you're going to need a pump

Wookey

Apreciar wrote: »

The house is a normal detached with the tank in the loft but certainly not 1.5m above the floor level in the loft.

Is there any way around the problem, are there taps that dont need this much pressure that I could fit.

Raise the tank as high as possible to give best possible shower without using a dedicated shower pump. Shower pumps are good and will give you over 20 litres per minute, but they are costly and noisy and you will also have increased water consumption due to them which ain't so good if you are on a metered supply. There maybe a tapset which will have a slightly less min head requirement, the shower though from it will still not be good due to the tank pressure. Only other option would be to change your whole system to mains fed, which would cost a fortune.

vaio

I’m slightly confused that the tap specification gives flow rate based on 0.2 bar and then goes on to state min pressure 0.3 bar.

Apreciar

vaio wrote: »

add in some more for pipework losses and I'd say if you want to keep the taps then you're going to need a pump

If I change the taps are there any that will not need this pressure. The house is no different from scores of others on the estate and so I assume all were built the same. The problem is we have only just bought the house and so dont know what the original bath pressure was like.

If there are taps to do the job what should we be looking for.

Apreciar

vaio wrote: »

I’m slightly confused that the tap specification gives flow rate based on 0.2 bar and then goes on to state min pressure 0.3 bar.

Yes, I thought that also.

So does that mean they will operate at 0.2 bar or do they need the 0.3

keystone

Apreciar wrote: »

The house is a normal detached with the tank in the loft but certainly not 1.5m above the floor level in the loft.

Is there any way around the problem, are there taps that dont need this much pressure that I could fit.

Your problem is flow rate not pressure. You probaly have iro 0.25 - 0.3 bar static head between the level of the water in the CWST in the roof and the top of the tap. So you are operating the tap at its minimum in any event.

These are 1/4 turn ceramic disk type which don't work very well with conventional UK plumbing in any event as the disks are very restrictive. In addition I'm guessing you will have fitted the taps iaw Water Regs which means you will have fitted service valves to the supply feeds (H&C) for both taps which are again restrictive unless you use a full bore version which is less restrictive. The basin tap is a monoblock which will have had tails supplied with it. These have an internal diameter of only about 0.8mm so you are reducing the bore of the pipework from 15mm by half by using these = serious reduction in flow rate. What is the pipework for the bath? Is it in 22mm or 15mm?

Quite honestly what you are doing is trying to run an unleaded engine on 4 star and wondering why it doesn't work that well.

Are the service valves fully open?

Have you measured the flow rate out of the taps at all? For the bath its probably no better than 5 or 6 litres per minute is my guess and for the basin somewhat less.

See if Bargain and Quick will replace them (which they may not as they have been fitted) and go for taps with conventional head gear inside.

Cheers

vaio

It looks like there is a mistake in the spec (or you are misreading:D) but I’m sure you will be able to get taps that will work at 2 or 3m head but the head you will have on a shower is going to be less and won’t work and you will need to pump or convert to mains

Apreciar

keystone wrote: »

What is the pipework for the bath? Is it in 22mm or 15mm?


See if Bargain and Quick will replace them (which they may not as they have been fitted) and go for taps with conventional head gear inside.

Cheers

The pipework to the bath is 22mm but the taps as you say rece this.

By conventional headgear do you mean the standard old fashioned turn type.