Electric domestic water heating

Janice2491

Hi Guys,

Looking for a bit of advice please. I currently have a one bedroom flat that has a massive square hot water tank heated by immersion but I have really poor water flow so I’m looking to change this. I don’t have gas and there is no ability to use renewables so I’m looking for something electrical that is contained within the property.

There is a bath in the bathroom so whatever I choose needs to have sufficient capacity to fill this in a reasonable time. The only other demands are the bathroom basin and kitchen sink as the shower is electric. Therefore there isn’t a massive demand day to day but if i want to have a bath it needs to cope with that.

Any help or advice would be massively appreciated :j:j

Owain_Moneysaver

Your massive square hot water tank is probably a boxed combination cylinder incorporating a cold water tank and the hot water cylinder with immersion heater, affectionately known as a Fortic. The flow will be limited by the height of the tank above the bath.

Replacing with an unvented direct cylinder is the only realistic way, if your cold water flow and pressure are up to it. It would also provide you with a mains pressure shower that's a lot better than an instantaneous electric one.

Unvented hot water cylinders must be installed by a G3 qualified plumber and will need a copper pressure relief discharge pipe running continuously downhill to a safe location on the outside of the building.

Using a shower pump on the outlet of the existing hot water tank may be possible, but those smaller tanks may empty too quickly if pumped.

Janice2491

Thank you for your response... much appreciated. I had thought about a pump which would let me fill the bath quicker but then I still need to heat the massive tank just to wash the dishes or whatever if I’m not having a bath. I think your suggestion of the unvented system will solve both for me so will go with that.

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply to me 🙂👍

System

Unvented systems need a minimum pressure of 1.5 Bars according to my plumber (and various websites)

Janice2491

Ok thanks. Will get the pressure checked before I buy anything 🙂👍

System

If you are getting quotes then any installer worth his G3 annotation should check your water pressure. You can rough idea of your cold water pressure by following this advice from Victorian Plumbing:

How can I test my water pressure?

There is a simple way to accurately measure your water pressure:

Get a water jug (preferably 1 or 2 litres in size)

Get a stopwatch (usually found on most mobile phones)

Place your jug under a tap and turn it on

Time 6 seconds on your stopwatch & turn your tap off.

If you're a whizz at maths, you can do the next bit in your head (or simply use a calculator - found on most mobile phones). Take the amount of water in the jug in litres (e.g. 0.8 litres) and multiply this by 10.

This will give you your flow rate in litres per minute (e.g. 0.8 litres x 10 = 8 litres per minute).

If your flow rate is less than 10 litres per minute, you have what is considered low water pressure.

Anywhere between 10 - 15 litres per minute is acceptable, but can be improved. A flow above 15 litres per minute is considered good.

Cardew

Just a warning that it will be very expensive to install an unvented direct cylinder and IMO difficult to justify for a 1 bed flat.



A much cheaper option would be a pump as suggested in post#2

AndyPK

unvented install between £1000-1500