Cost to get shower installed?

boots_babe

Hi,

Just a quick question, since we moved our one bathroom has just had chrome taps on the bath, with one of those shower hoses attached - so not a proper shower.

We are looking at getting a proper electric shower put in, but have no idea as to how much this might cost to get someone to install it. Would be grateful if someone could give us a rough idea - we're just after a standard electric shower not a power shower if it makes any difference.

Thanks.

HugoSP

How long is a piece of string?

1) Where is your rising main for your cold feed in relation to the shower?
2) Where is your consumer unit (fuse box)?
3) Has your consumer unit got available capacity to handle a shower, or would you need a shower consumer unit to sit alongside it - or would you be well advised to renew your consumer unit (if it has those rewireable fuses)?
4) Would you need your earthing and equipotential bonding arrangements updating?

One property I did last year required a new shower to be fitted. They needed a shower consumer unit to sit alongside the old fusebox, the shower, and update to the equipotential bonding and earthing arrangements. The 6mm cable from the old CU to the shower was already in place, but the old fusebox was over capacity. In addition I had to issue a BS7671 Installation Inspection and Test Cert and raise a building notice - I am not Part P registered.

The cost to them was in the region of £450. The connection of the cold water feed was the easiest bit. The cable route in the shower needed to be amended slightly, so I retiled the area that was disturbed.

From what you tell me about your bathroom I bet it has an old fusebox. If it does I would consider getting it checked out if you haven't already. These fuseboxes typically have a max rating of 60Amps. The new MK 12 way split load boxes are rated to 100Amps. Diversity calcs need to be done to decide on the required fusebox rating - however if you want to do what most people do and go for a 9.5KW shower with a 10mm cable - begging about 45Amps on its own, then I very much suspect that 60Amps will be insufficient, especially if you have an electric cooker.

Have you considered one of those showers with an integrated pump? This will work off the current hot and cold water system and negate the need for a separate circuit from the CU. One of these will probably be much cheaper to fit. I saw one today that plugs into a wall socket in a cupboard the other side of the bathroom wall via a transformer. Part P would not be an issue as it works off a plug, plus it will be a SELV unit - that is to say that there is no earth in that part of the circuit that someone in the bathroom could come into contact with.

Steve_xx

This is a most difficult question. You have several things to consider here:

1. The location of the shower, ie over the bath or in its own shower room. Obviously its own cubicle would incur extra cost
2. The cost of the shower unit itself. You could expect to buy one for around £80
3. The plumbing. Assuming you are putting it over the bath there would need to be some pipework installed from the nearest point of the cold supply. This would proably be taken from the feed to the bath or washbasin. If you require this pipe to be buried in the wall then that would cost.
4. The electrical supply to it. It would need its own cable to be run from the fusebox and it would need its own separate fuse (so be sure there is room for it in your existing fusebox or you will need another small fusebox to be fitted). The cable is heavy duty and will not come at less than £1 a meter if you were to buy it yourself. It would also need to have a pull switch fitted to the ceiling in order to isolate the supply to it.
5. Taking all that into account, excluding the cost of the shower unit, I would think it would be possible to easily spend £300. But as I said, this is a guestimate only.

travel_freak

Hello again HugoSP

We're keeping you busy tonight!

I read your reply above with interest. To be honest, I didn't really want an electric shower but had hoped I might be able to just change the taps in the bath to add a mixer and one of those long hoses with a shower head that you just hook to the wall.

I've had various builders in and have heard so many conflicting things now that I'm not sure what's correct. There is currently a combination boiler at the property. One builder said you can't have a pump as it doesn't work with a combination boiler. One or two have said just the change of taps will be fine because the water pressure seems fine.

But the most recent builder - who impressed me the most - said that although the cold water pressure is fine, the hot wouldn't be very good/powerful so he recommended an electric shower be installed.

Having read your post I'm wondering if the change of taps and pump option might not be better for me but don't know if this would be compatible with my boiler, what do you think?

Sorry to keep bombarding you with questions!

Many thanks in advance.

Regards,

bruce2110

OK. as far as the plumbing goes, i think you could expect to pay anywhere between £60 - £120 depending if you want the pipe chased into the wall, or surfaced mounted ect, plus depending on the location of cold water pipes (if you don't have any in the loft area) this could affect the price of materials slightly due to the higher price of copper if long long runs of pipe are required!

as far as the electrical side goes i'm sure one the guys on here could give you a rough idea of what you could expect to pay for the cable to be installed as i don't do this work any more due to the new part p regulations!

bruce2110

no, a pumped shower won't be compatible with a combi system. if your water pressure is quite good on the hot and cold, why not just have shower/bath mixer taps fitted as this would be a lot cheaper than an electric shower installation?

ozskin

dear travel freak just a few things, why are you asking a builder, we see enough plumbers give suspect advice (though not in these forums) let alone builders.
firstly you can not pump downline from a combi, ever! assuming its a relatively newish boiler then assuming you do not have large demand for the hot water, or demand when you need to use the shower then i would never recommend an electric. A reasonable combi will give you a 'power', much better shower and cost much less to fit and cost much less to run. A combi in theory will give the same pressure out of the hot taps as the cold so the last builders does not know what he is talking about. Generally a combi will give a good shower assuming the above, though will fill the bath slowly. To make life easier you could replace the bath taps with a bath shower mixer and for safety would recommend a thermostatic BSM. no cables no new pipes a power shower and a lot cheaper to run than electric. They can be expensive but there is one out there complete with 10yr warranty for around £150. if you need info pm and will try and point you in the right direction though not back to work till 3-4th.

BobProperty

Like ozskin says, consider a straight replacement for the bath taps like an Aquamixa Thermo Combi but it ain't cheap.

HugoSP

Hi Travel

Firstly a Happy New Year to you and all the other members here.

Sorry not to get back to you earlier - I've had a few broadband problems.

Quite often a pump and a combi are not compatible. The problem is that a lot of combis dont deliver hot water at a very fast rate. Oskin is right that the HW should be equally as powerful as the CW, but at that pressure it may not be very hot, so to give the water more time to heat up via the heat exchanger in the boiler you have to slow it down. This means reducing the flow rate, which will effectively reduce the pressure.

Whilst it may take longer to fill a bath, which you could probably live with, a pumped shower needs a lot of water over a short space of time. From what your builder says he may have checked hot your flow rate at certain temperatures.

I haven't heard of the product that Bob mentions, but it's worth a look if the combi will support it. Otherwise I would look again at the electric shower.

BobProperty

Aquamixa Thermo

I'm guessing ozskin knows of a similar product at the price he mentions.