Increasing water flow upstairs

drummer_666

we agreed conventional. it was only when the floor was dug up and my builder saw the the blue plastic supply pipe was laid but connected to the old pipe and old stop !!!!, that he said to the plumber change the pipe and stop tap and if its then good enough fit a combi.

he fitted the combi before changing the pipe & stop tap so therefore not checking the new pressure/flow. he then fitted a pump to try and compensate this and it didn't work. it then turns out he's fitted the pump on its side, which is probably why it is so ridiculously noisy (even when toilet flushes or cold tap is used).

this is after he went awol and then kept lying to my builder, saying he had done the pipe work so it was ready to lay the new concrete floor, when he hadn't. builder had to cancel the screed tanker that was booked.

plumber then didn't turn up again & again to finish the pipe coming out of the ground for the hob, so builder had to do the floor by hand leaving that bit of floor clear

i turned the water temperature down on the boiler & it did nothing to the flow.

keystone

Let me look at this from a slightly different angle then. Is the stopcock throttled back to reduce the flow rate which was deemed too high in the kitchen and the DHW too cold and now OP has a higher water temperature because the flow rate is reduced?

Now to open it up further:

Has the stopcock been turned off for other purposes and not opened to the same extent as when the installer finished installing the boiler?

Have we got a kinked flexi on the HW feed to the bath or something else in the pipework which is highly restrictive to flow? Is the iso valve fully open?

Have we actually measured the flow rate at the bath from BOTH hot and cold taps and compared the results?

Cheers

keystone

drummer_666 wrote: »

he fitted the combi before changing the pipe & stop tap so therefore not checking the new pressure/flow.

Naughty.

he then fitted a pump to try and compensate this and it didn't work. it then turns out he's fitted the pipe on its side, which is probably why it is noisy.

Oh even naughtier. Thou shalt NOT pump mains pressure systems. Not for one single solitary microsecond.

Cheers

Canucklehead

keystone wrote: »

Naughty.

Oh even naughtier. Thou shalt NOT pump mains pressure systems. Not for one single solitary microsecond.

Cheers

Well yea, but no, but yea .... but hmmm.. maybe, but YES

It should be noted that it will not move more than 12 litres per minute to comply with regs. Not sure how it works in practice but they seem confident don't they.

GSR.

drummer_666

stop tap is fully open.

flow rate isn't too high in the kitchen, the flow is slightly better than it was with the old stop tap, but not very much.

haven't measured the hot or cold water in the bath. but it is visually very very slow/weak.

There hasn't been new piping done to the bath but the flow has dropped since the combi was fitted.

drummer_666

oh and the pump didn't work. the mains supply is too weak.

when the pump was on the bath taps ran for say 20 seconds then all water stopped for around 20 secs. it did that continous.

i told the plumber who said that's because its sucking out all of the water from the mains (therefore it would take all my neighbours water too) and to contact the water board.

the water board had been out previously and say they are meeting the minimum requirements, albeit only just.

southcoastrgi

keystone wrote: »

Oh even naughtier. Thou shalt NOT pump mains pressure systems. Not for one single solitary microsecond.

Cheers

totally agree, if it is a normal pump & not a bronze one it will corrode & start falling apart within months get it removed asap,

but now i am worried because if this guy didn't know you can't fit a pump on the mains, didn't do a flow rate test, didn't tell the builder a combi wasn't really suitable, have you checked that he is Gas Safe Reg because the list of faults it doesn't sound like he knows what he is doing & just some cheap guy brought in by the builder, so did you check ?

southcoastrgi

drummer_666 wrote: »

the water board had been out previously and say they are meeting the minimum requirements, albeit only just.

there you go, a "plumber" who didn't know what he was doing & fitted totally the wrong boiler for your house, if the builder told him to do it then he is equally responsible & i would be asking for the boiler to be replaced with a conventional system at his cost.

drummer_666

well when I said to the builder that fitting a pump to the mains is illegal, he seemed to think it wasn't fitted directly to the mains. I know there is a bit of pipe coming from the stop tap, which feeds up to the taps and goes across then to the pump then more tube to the boiler.

Canucklehead

Hi.

OP you should have listened to your own advice and fitted the new roof tank cylinder option.
You clearly didn't have the pressure or flow to support the combi. (as posted by yourself previously)

Your options now are to:
Get the above pump.
Have a new main supply fitted.
Use a gravity system.(tank in roof).

Really, really poor advice from the 'plumber'

Given the extremely poor pressure/flow I'm not sure the pump will work in your case as it's a shared supply.

GSR.