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I appear to have 2 faulty showers in our house which is a little inconvenient. One has been out of action for a while whilst I struggle to nail down a tradesperson to actually do what needs doing to fix it (seemingly impossible) - but now the other one has gone on the blink.
Looking like I might just have to fix both myself. So:
1) gravity fed shower with just a mixer in the shower cubicle and a grundfos pump in the airing cupboard. On and off it’s struggled to get going over a few years (it’s probably 5 years old) - but now you switch it on and it gives you a few seconds of normal power then it just dribbles to a stop. One plumber did come out and said the pump is really noisy and it probably needs a new one. I said go for it - give me a quote and then we’ll go down that route. Chased a few times and he said he was waiting on a supplier but now he’s gone silent. 2nother plumbers said they’d come out but then haven’t - now silence.
The hot water tank pressure must be really low as there’s no drop be the even the hot water tank and the pump itself. Cold water there’s probably a 1-1.5m drop from the cold tank in the loft.
Is there much to picking a replacement pump other than checking they’re ok for low pressure input? There look to be some kind of push fit connectors but I’ve not dealt with these before (only done radiators and taps with an olive / compression fitting) so no idea how these come off.
2) Cold water feed electric shower with the unit on a wall. This has been a bit crap with temperature consistency for years but we didn’t really use it so just left it. Now it’s only running cold and says ‘low pressure’. Clearly I know it’s low pressure from the type of system we have - and the two pressures haven’t changed recently.
Could I fit a ‘pumped’ electric shower that’s designed for cold input only? If so perhaps this would give a hint more pressure than what we’ve got now and work with what we’ve got?
Thinking for point 2 one of these might do the job:
Is your cold mains feed really low?
The pump for option 2 will only bring the supply up to 1.5 to 2 bar(ish),to allow the shower to work as a normal electric shower works, so you are never going to get a power shower effect from it.
I'd be looking at what is causing your low water pressure first.
Shower 1, pumps are pretty easy to swap out, if I was doing it, I'd quote a hour, but probably do it in 20 minutes. It helps if there are isolation taps on the incoming pipes.
Check what BAR your present pump purports to pump out, and get the same or slightly higher, along with the 1 or 2 pipe feed (some dont have a cold water feed, but most are 4 pipe pumps now.)
We have high water pressure here, so I was using a Venturi induction pump shower where the cold water sucks the hot water out of the tank. Very simple design with little to go wrong. However, we're also a really hard water area so eventually every shower scales up inside and dies.
As a work around while it's not 100%:
Turn the thermo valve all way to cold
Turn the shower on
Turn all the way to hot turn off
Wait a few seconds after pump stops
Turn back on
We do this each time and it works fine after. May not work for you but worth a try. This is our shower routine until we can get a non-vented system fitted with a load of other work to the house.
Our mains pressure is quite good - only 1 tap downstairs and another electric shower downstairs take a direct feed from it though. Everything else takes cold water from the tank in the loft.
The only problem changing the grundfos Pope really is the location of it - it’s squeezed in next to the hot water tank and there are a few pipes in front of it. It’s a 4 pipe affair and all those pipes have isolation valves on them - so in theory it shouldn’t be too much of a drama.
I’m not looking for a power shower effect for the electric on the wall shower - just something that works - and ideally a little less pathetic than the current trident thing.