Replace electric shower?

ed110220

In my new house I have an electric shower, which I found slightly surprising as there is a gas heated hot water cylinder via a Baxi Bermuda SL3 back boiler. It looks fairly recently installed and also as though the shower used to be plumbed into the hot water system. The previous owner was elderly, so perhaps an electric shower was safer for him.

Anway, I was thinking that it would probably be cheaper to have the shower operating on the hot water system. It seems silly to have a tank full of hot water just for washing our hands and doing the washing up (there is no bath). Also my dad says that being in a hard water area electric showers don't last long.

What do you think?

rustyboy21

ed110220 wrote: »

In my new house I have an electric shower, which I found slightly surprising as there is a gas heated hot water cylinder via a Baxi Bermuda SL3 back boiler. It looks fairly recently installed and also as though the shower used to be plumbed into the hot water system. The previous owner was elderly, so perhaps an electric shower was safer for him.

Anway, I was thinking that it would probably be cheaper to have the shower operating on the hot water system. It seems silly to have a tank full of hot water just for washing our hands and doing the washing up (there is no bath). Also my dad says that being in a hard water area electric showers don't last long.

What do you think?

Started answering and then saw the last paragraph, no bath....

whats the pressure like on sink taps in bathroom? may give you an idea what you are playing with. BBU's are great, but you may find the pressure is bad if you want a shower.

You may be able to fit a pump on the feed to increase pressure, but I would reccomend a plumber to see if the pressure is ok. A lot of the shower mixer taps need a min bar level of pressure. There is a way of checking this out, by running the tap into bucket and timing it, will try to find out what it is for you and post link.

get back as soon as I find it for you. Something to do on Christmas day ! lol

rustyboy21

Have a look at the instruction manual below, see page 2 for flow rates.

It says recommended min pressure is 8 litres per minute from both hot and cold taps. The cold tap, however cannot be getting water directly from the main water feed ( i.e same way your tap in kitchen gets it from ) the cold water will have to come from your tank in the loft. If you switch the water off at the stop !!!! ( I wrote c*ck and it wont ake it !) and find the water at the shower goes off too, you are feeding directly from mains. if it runs for 5 minutes say, then it is being fed from the cold tank in your loft and you should be ok.

As said it all depends on the pressure you have.


A normal shower takes about 30 litres of water, a lot less than a bath

Link is as follows.....

http://www.tritonshowers.co.uk/media/13300/elina%20bar%20mixer.pdf

ed110220

Thanks for your advice rustyboy. The pressure from the bathroom hot tap at the sink seems pretty good, but I'll measure the actual flow rate. It is of course lower than the height of the shower though so higher up it would be lower I guess.

The cold water does come from a tank in the loft. My uncle said this would also provide the pressure for the hot water as well, but I didn't see how. The hot water tank is in a cupboard upstairs and is no higher than the shower so maybe it would need a pump.

There is no bath in the bathroom, but you can see there used to be one, so maybe the pipe shaped hole in the ceiling and the cut off hot water pipe from the tank were just for that.

Not sure if I'd replace the bath - it would have to be a special short bath as a standard length one wouldn't fit. I think perhaps it was taken out and replaced with a shower because the old man who lived here before found it difficult to get in and out (there are hand rail supports in the shower).

rustyboy21

I think what your uncle is saying is that , even though the hot water pressure may be a bit iffy, because it wil be coming out scolding hot, you will use more cold, so the force of the cold coming down from the tank will compensate for it.

You can get short baths, if you are looking at selling in the future a bath always works better from a family viewpoint than a shower ( kids in bath etc )

Hope all works out good for you. Have a good christmas !