Going fully electric - Do you have to change your shower?

anon_ymous

Solarchaser said:

I did reduce some of my piping from 22mm down to 15mm to speed up the hot water coming through, I'm a bit more than 20 ft, but probably less than 30, and it's less than 10 seconds on full bore.

Your mixer tap should be fed with hot and cold and so putting it to full hot should be the same as putting a hot tap on.

Is it pumped from the cylinder?
If so, the pump and its piping will offer more cold piping to be overcome.

Might help insulating the piping from the cylinder if you haven't already

Isn't it a bit of both? Ie: smaller pipes have less flow rate but also they're quicker to get through? So you have to get a happy medium where the pipe isn't dressed so to speak? 

Solarchaser

Vast majority of taps are fed by flexible tap connector hoses with an internal bore of 8mm or so, and so 15mm piping is plenty good enough, and 22mm piping will give no advantage in this scenario 

markin

waqasahmed said:

mickyduck55 said:

I have both, the 10 kWh shower is used in winter when I have little to no solar excess to divert, the power shower from HW cylinder used when I have an excess of solar so water heated for "free"  The downside of the power shower is that a relatively large amount is wasted, I can be in and out of the electric shower in about the same time as it takes to get the other at temperature.  The downside of the electric shower is that no matter how sunny or charged my batteries are I still import from the grid when its in use.. 10 kWh exceeds my solar and batter delivery capability.

I do intend on getting more batteries anyway tbf, so I'd hope that with batteries, I could basically run off electric

I do currently have 

One electric shower 
One shower powered by gas 

I can easily shower in five minutes but the gas one takes longer to heat up

It's the max drain of the battery and inverter output that will prevent you running a 10kw shower, just doubleing the battary may not do it.

anon_ymous

markin said:

waqasahmed said:

mickyduck55 said:

I have both, the 10 kWh shower is used in winter when I have little to no solar excess to divert, the power shower from HW cylinder used when I have an excess of solar so water heated for "free"  The downside of the power shower is that a relatively large amount is wasted, I can be in and out of the electric shower in about the same time as it takes to get the other at temperature.  The downside of the electric shower is that no matter how sunny or charged my batteries are I still import from the grid when its in use.. 10 kWh exceeds my solar and batter delivery capability.

I do intend on getting more batteries anyway tbf, so I'd hope that with batteries, I could basically run off electric

I do currently have 

One electric shower 
One shower powered by gas 

I can easily shower in five minutes but the gas one takes longer to heat up

It's the max drain of the battery and inverter output that will prevent you running a 10kw shower, just doubleing the battary may not do it.

Ah damn. Inverter output would be 6.5 kWh I believe, and the batteries would be 15 kWh 

anon_ymous

Solarchaser said:

Vast majority of taps are fed by flexible tap connector hoses with an internal bore of 8mm or so, and so 15mm piping is plenty good enough, and 22mm piping will give no advantage in this scenario 

Thanks. FWIW, the majority of my central heating appears to have the "microbore" stuff so I'll probably have to upgrade that anyway

70sbudgie

This is interesting. I have put flow limiters on all my (mixer) taps and showers. So I guess the diameter of the piping is probably irrelevant. 

The only exception is the bath and it is at the furthest part of the house so takes forever for hot water to come through. At the moment, this is actually a good thing as it means the children can't run the bath too hot. 😉

anon_ymous

70sbudgie said:

This is interesting. I have put flow limiters on all my (mixer) taps and showers. So I guess the diameter of the piping is probably irrelevant. 

The only exception is the bath and it is at the furthest part of the house so takes forever for hot water to come through. At the moment, this is actually a good thing as it means the children can't run the bath too hot. 😉

For me it's a case of well there's a lot of water waste too

But if I have to upgrade my pipes anyway, I might as well ask for thick pipes