1st floor shower pressure at last

Pincher

Just wanted to share a little success.

I have a first floor bathroom fed from the loft cold water tank,
and a hot water cylinder on the first floor, so the shower has never been satisfactory. I had tried a 3 bar pump in a different house, but it was so diabolically noisy, that I put a countdown timer switch on it, so it's only on when you want it to be, usually for a shower on the first floor. Having a shower in that house is like turning on a Spitfire with a Merlin engine.

So, I was determined to improve the shower pressure without the noise with this house. I got the plumber to put in a Grundfos 0.5bar hot water pump on the hot water pipe to the 1st floor bathroom. Unfortunately, the higher hot water pressure pushed the cold water back up to the loft tank, via the bath tap, so the cold pipe actually became hot.

Today, we put in a single check valve under the bath tap cold feed to stop the reverse flow, which worked, but the higher pressure hot water meant the shower was too hot.

So we put in a 22mm thermostatic mixer, TMV3 spec, so the hot and cold are mixed to a non-scalding temperature, and then pumped to the bathroom by the 0.5bar Grundfos. It works brilliantly! Even the cold tap is having a cooling effect when turned on, so there is still some temperature control at the bath tap.

The shower pressure is now fine.
The most important thing is, you can barely hear the Grundfos pump.
It's not actually cheaper than a Showermate pump, but the end result is anyone can have a shower at mid-night, and disturb nobody.