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House currently has a system boiler with a vented hot water system fed from a tank in the cupboard on the landing.
2 showers in the house and they're both crap. Presumably because the hot water coming from a tank means the pressure is low.
When we moved in, the plan was to eventually rip out the tank to gain some bathroom space and have a combi instead but a whole new bathroom and heating system isn't really in the budget right now.
My uneducated mind says the easiest way to a better shower is probably to pump the water from the tank but I'm not sure whether mixer showers will deal well with an imbalance in pressure between hot and cold. Is there a thing that does that well?
Pumping from the tank also seems less efficient than option 2 which is instantaneous hot water at mains pressure.
In my head, a shower unit which sits in the loft and heats and supplies mains water to the shower via a digital mixer thing should exist but either my Google skills are failing or no one makes them? I'm not really sure what I'm searching for though so maybe I'm just being dumb.
I know you can get 'on the wall' electric showers but my experience of those in hotels of questionable quality is that they're noisy things that blast needle thin jets of water at high pressure. I definitely don't want that.
I've been looking at instantaneous water heaters but they seem like a bit of a minefield and a lot of those I've looked cherry pick the stats that they display. They'll say they'll deliver 10lpm and heat the water +50c but when you really look into it, they'll do 50c at 2lpm and at 10lpm, you're only getting 25'c which is fairly useless.
What do I need? Other than a combi boiler and a new bathroom.
I guessing an unvented hot water system would be better and a possible option. Can vented become unvented?
Help?
Yes, a pump will sort you out. It can be made to feed both showers, but not at the same time. You need to fit an Essex Flange toward the top of the tank to make sure you have a good flow, thats if there isnt already a spare exit boss on the tank at the top, there normally isnt. You may be able to put a Tee on the outgoing HW pipe to save fitting an Essex flange, it all depends on pipe size.That feeds the hot water to the pump, then you tap off the cold water feed to the hot water tank, and that feeds the cold water to the pump. You then need piping to the showers. Very simple job for most plumbers, access to fit new pipes to the shower is the hardest part.
I had the same problem of a weak shower and little money so fitted a Salamander 1Bar twin pump that pumps both hot and cold. We now have a shower that gets you wet, rather than mildly moist. It is noisy though, even after I boxed it in and with hindsight I should have fitted a more powerful pump but the 1Bar was end of line so heavily discounted. I also fitted a thermostatic mixer tap at the same time. Bliss!
Our system is the same as yours. We’ve got 3 Mira digital pumped showers. 2 of which have been in for 10 years
they are basically self contained remote units (mine are in the loft) and you give them a hot and a cold feed from the hot and cold taps, they mix the water and pump it to she shower head. Mine all come through the ceilings of the bathrooms and you basically have the rail that your shower head goes on running all the way to the ceiling so the water comes down the rail then the flexi hose comes off the bottom of the rail
that bit sounds shonky but it means there’s no plumbing at all in the wall, so you can re tile or whatever to your hearts content. Also means any plumbing of future repairs don’t take place in a decorated space.
control is via a wall mounted wireless controller
because it’s digital, when you hit go, the pre mixing happens instantly and other than purging the water in the length of pipe from the pump to the head, the water is spot on 39 immediately
the units are a bit spendy but if you’re paying a pro, the cost saved on fitting as it’s so easy isn’t zero and for me living in a hard water area I always considered the reassurance that when they break, I can replace a unit in the loft in 5 minutes with no tools to be a huge benefit - that said, 10 years in they’ve been trouble free
Mira digital pumped shower
+1 next door bathroom fitter neighbour swears by them & when he's recovered from prostate cancer will be fitting two for us.
Just happen to have a brand new Bristan shower pump for sale if its any good? PM me for details.
Both the old cheap power showers my parents have always impressed me with how high a flow rate they had (and both work fine at the same time), I guess more hassle to deal with than a separate pump if something goes wrong though.
Pump both hot and cold.
Parents had a new bathroom, it was crap. Plumber fitted a pump to one of the feeds. Still crap. A shower can't control the temp properly if the one feed is higher pressure than the other i.e the pumped cold will stop the hot entering the mixer.
Presumably at the moment the hot is low pressure from the header tank while the cold is at mains pressure, so adding a pump to increase the hot pressure can't make the imbalance any worse, surely?
Presumably at the moment the hot is low pressure from the header tank while the cold is at mains pressure, so adding a pump to increase the hot pressure can't make the imbalance any worse, surely?
The cold water feed to the copper/stainless cylinder will be low pressure, fed from a header tank sited somewhere above it, usually in the attic, but could be directly above it in the airing cupboard. The cold water feed to the pump will also come from this tank, thus the pressure of the hot and cold feeds will be equal into the two sides of the pump.
Only unvented cylinders have a mains pressure cold water feed to them.
Are you after a golden shower?
On reading the thread title I was going to suggest soapy t1ts, but realise I might get pinged by the mods.
On closer reading a pump was the solution for a good shower
That Mira pump sounds good, but another option is replace your cylinder with an unvented one, i.e. at mains pressure. Benefit is increased hot water flow everywhere in the house. Also no pump noise when someone is showering.
been very happy with my aqualisa pumped showers. my mrs. loves it (she only has a crappy electric shower at home) as do I having spent a fair while in hotels overseas where they take showers seriously. i had to replace mine once after about 12 years. does exactly what you want in one unit OP. probably worth looking at the mira too by the sounds of it.
Mira also do a mixer with an integral pump, worth looking at.
Either a single pump, or unvented. By the time you buy two digital mixers you will have paid for an unvented cylinder.
Buy a heat pump ready cylinder in case and it will also reheat really quickly with a boiler.
And you NEVER take the cold from the cylinder cold feed, it should be dedicated and ideally taken off the low the level of the cylinder cold feed. This means if the cistern fails to fill the hot water runs out first and helps prevent scalding.
Unvented tank. Provided the water pressure to the house is good this will give good pressure for showers etc and lots of hot water.
combis are ok if you have limited space and like burning gas, a flat for example.
alternatively impeller pumps can provide enough oomph for a shower. Noisy though.
I’ve lived in houses with all the setups above. All the pumps worked well (remote, integrated) were stable and powerful but all were noisy.
Combis are crap. We need to move away from the idea they’re efficient and powerful. They’re not. I’ve a 40kw combi now and it’s fine for one shower, but two people using separate showers or dare to fill a kettle while showering and it’s rubbish. Might be fine for static caravans and granny flats but not for a proper house.
Best house I’ve ever lived in for shower pressure and stability had a massive 300l kingspan unvented cylinder. Like every French or German house has had for the last 50 years.