New Home - Hot Water to Showers

7chb

Hi,

Hopefully this post doesn’t make me sound to silly if there is an easy fix!

We have just moved home, we have previously only had a combi boiler however our new home has a water tank.

We have turned the water/heating on - the radiators work fine and we got hot water out of the taps, however with both of our showers we get hot water for about 10 seconds before it then goes cold again. Is there something simple with the boiler/water tank we are missing?

We turned the immersion heater on and we did get (scolding) hot water out of the showers, however we don’t want to use this all of the time.

Any help would be much appreciated

jk0

Ha ha. You need to run the boiler for an hour or so to warm up the tank. It's not instant like a combi boiler.

mrschaucer

The water tank is for STORING your hot water once your boiler has made it, so that you can use it as and when you choose. It should be insulated to keep the water hot. If you found that the water heated by the immersion was "scalding", look for a thermostat on the hot water tank and turn it down to a hot water temperature you are happy with - no lower than 60 degrees.

Rodders53

Normally there is a Timer-Controller for CH central heating and HW hot water. Often by the boiler or near the HW cylinder.

The HW needs to be on for a period or periods each day to suit your HW usage.

There will be thermostat to control the HW temperature fixed on the tank to control the boiler as well.

This is in addition to the immersion heater thermostat (electric HW heater for a backup).

7chb

Hi, thanks for your replies. We have had the hot water on, we even left this on overnight on our second day just to make sure the water had been heated, however we have the issue that when we run the showers the water is only hot for 10 seconds before going cold, but if we run taps the water is really hot and shows no signs of getting cold as would be expected.

When we ran the immersion heater the water was running hot from the showers though.

This is what confuses me, as I would have thought if the immersion heater had warmed the boiler up and the water runs fine through the shower then the hot water timer should also work ok? I just didn’t know if there was something simple I may have been missing (there are plenty of taps connected to the pipes in the airing cupboard which I may need to play with?) which would fix the issue.

The boiler was serviced prior to use moving in and so this shouldn’t be an issue which is complimented by the hot water through all the other taps in the house.

Thanks again

Jonesya

Based on what you've said - that the showers run fine when the immersion is on, but that taps around the house run hot even when shower is running cold, assuming you are running a decent amount of water through the taps, that must suggest the taps are fed from a different supply to the showers. I can't see how that is possible with a normal boiler set-up.

Have you got an unusual boiler set-up, is it a combi-boiler directly feeding the taps, but with a hot-water tank supplying the bath and showers?