Just moved to a new house: Slow Heating, Poor Water Pressure

farazfastian

Thanks everyone, just a quick thing can i ask any plumber to come in do they charge just for the call out?
I'm thinking to look in to yell for plumber, gas safe engineer (for the cooker fitting) near my house, is it the only way? Thanks

G_M

DEpends on the plumber and depends what you want them to do. If you have an 'emergency' and want work done there and then. you'll usually pay a call out fee and then an hourly rate + VAT plus parts.

However if you are planning work, what you need is to ask for a quote. Plumber comes out, looks at what you want doing, then gives you a price (preferably a quote [fixed], not an estimate [a guess that can change] ), preferably in writing. You can then get 3 or 4 of these to compare, then phone your selected plumber and arrange the work.

Recommendation is best, local is good, avoid the 'A1 Plumbers' ads in yellow pages - prob a big company with call out fees hourly rates over the top.

farazfastian

Just showed water pressure problem to a local plumber, he recommended the same solution i.e. twin pumps (hot n cold) to sort out the problems but he mentioned they're gonna be noisy and they've to sit with hot water tank in the bedroom plus there's no cold line there so that would be an extra work to take the line from cold tank in the loft to the bedroom. He estimated at least £600 for the job.

I really don't like the noise thing, plus its gonna take space in bedroom cupboard as well. Is this the only solution to this problem?
In face i don't like the noise comes from the cold water tank too, which starts filling up as soon as you use bathroom.

Regards
Faraz

ILW

Think there are issues using pumps with a combi boiler.

neas

Must admit getting insulation will make the house much warmer. Cavity wall insulation and topping up your loft insulation to 270mm in depth. Have you checked in loft what insulation you have?

It may be that your in a low pressure area... but there are ways around this.

If you have a combi condensor boiler (just a boiler that boils on demand water) then the system should be working off mains water pressure.

If you have a tank fed system then the pressure wont be brilliant (and is the older style of donig things). Essentially theres a tank in the airing cupboard (insulated) thats your hot water tank, theres a tank in the attic (or two) containing loads of cold water... this provides you with gravity fed pressure but is around 1 bar in pressure.. whereas my mains is too high pressure 3+ bar.

neas

Did you ask the plumber what the mains pressure was? In all honesty a tank fed system (like the one you have tank in cupboard, tank in loft) would normally be a reasonable amount of pressure. I had same thing in my house and we changed system over to a combi/condensor system which boils on demand. We paid a bit more for the boiler (200-300 quid more) but it has the capacity to fill a bath up with boiling hot water in about 4-5 minutes. Thereby we dont need to store a s hit load of water above our heads (which is a risk of leaking..)

ConfusedDep

One thing you may want to check is if the water coming into the property (stop c o c k) has been turned down. My last house when buying the water was a trickle turns out there had been a few leeks so they turned the water down, to stop leeks.

A cheap quick solution for the shower might just be to change the shower head. It can make a big difference.

farazfastian

I had another plumber yesterday he didn't check the mains pressure though but he mentioned to change the bath tap and shower as according to him tap is not holding the pressure which i can see as well as the cap which you pull to switch to shower not staying anymore.
He also mentioned to change toilet tank plastic valve bit which is not allowing the full water flow.

I'm thinking to do these bits first and then see if pressure improves.