Is a 7.5kw electric shower hot enough / suitable

Peakma

Hi we asked for an electric shower on freecycle, and someone has offered us a 7.5 kw thats about 15 years old.They swapped it for a more powerful hotter one.
should we accept there kind offer will it be o.k or will it just be a trickle of luke warm water!?
I would like a fairly warm one.Not sure if we should do the good moneysaving make-do option and be greatful.or if it will always annoy me and be better off to splash out on a new one,than always be annoyed every morning by a useless shower,thats not satisfyingly hot.
Does anyone have any possitive/negative experiences of 7.5 Kw showers.I would like to email the person who is offering it ,to let them know if it is any good for us.any advice ?

BobProperty

As a sweeping generalisation a 15 yo 7.5 Kw shower isn't going to be very impressive. If you live in a hard water area, or more accurately the shower is coming from a hard water area, then it is also likely to be furred up.
Have you any sort of shower at present? You do realise that the electrics for the shower are likely to cost more than anything else in the whole project.

jennifernil

Daughter had one of those, it was very disappointing, especially in winter.

ScoobieGirl

I used to have a 10.5kW electric shower which wasn't cheap, especially as I had to upgrade the cable as well. Even that wasn't much good in winter. If you put it on full blast (Which wasn't exactly fast flowing!) the temp would drop right down. If you dropped the flow down to a pathetic trickle it was lovely & toastie.

flang

9.5kw min even that wasnt good enough for my liking!

lilybugs

BobProperty wrote:

As a sweeping generalisation a 15 yo 7.5 Kw shower isn't going to be very impressive. If you live in a hard water area, or more accurately the shower is coming from a hard water area, then it is also likely to be furred up.
Have you any sort of shower at present? You do realise that the electrics for the shower are likely to cost more than anything else in the whole project.

Have to agree with Bob about the hard water. This is really important. If you fit a 7.5 Kw shower and live in a hard water area with no water softener then forget it. It'll probably last less that 6 months.

lightspeed

Quite simply, electric showers are not as good as a thermo mixer/standard mixer/power shower. The principle by which they work wont allow it.

Flow rate is generally poor (compared to the above) even when you up the kilowattage of the shower and reliability can be some what suspect.

There are some half decent electric showers out there but i would not expect a 15y/o 7.5kw to be one of them.

Either get as higher kw as possible, or fit a mixer or power shower.