I hope to improve the hot water supply to the bathroom attached to our attic (i.e. master) bedroom. But the heating/hot water system in our house has evolved piecemeal over the years so I’d really welcome any advice on the most sensible way ahead.
1. It’s a 5 bedroom/3-floor (including the attic conversion) house.
2. All the radiators run off a new Vaillant Ecomax 835E
3. This Vaillant also provides hot water to a bathroom on the first floor. The pressure is good enough for a very decent shower.
4. When the attic conversion was done, the bathroom up there was given a hot water supply which is independent of the rest of the house. This consists of a cold water tank in the roof void, feeding a traditional copper cylinder heated only by an immersion heater (not on an economy tariff) which supplies the attic bathroom via a (somewhat noisy) Stewart Turner pump. The pump supplies hot & cold to the bath and the power shower and hot-only to the basin. There is a (strong) cold mains feed to the basin and the toilet.
5. We are about to re-do the attic bathroom and – if we can do things better – would like to improve its hot water supply at the same time.
Our issues with the present hot water supply are:
a) the pump has broken down twice in recent years. On one occasion it leaked significantly, causing water damage to the room below. It would be good to eliminate this risk if possible.
b) the copper cylinder is 14 years old and already has a pinhole leak (at the very top, luckily), so will have to be replaced anyway.
c) the attic conversion company installed the cylinder first and built part of the attic around it. Replacing the immersion heater has therefore been a real nightmare. We could get the existing cylinder out, but in practice we’d have to replace it with a smaller cylinder – and the standard sizes which would fit in the space seem unlikely to cope well with our large bath & power shower.
d) in an ideal world, we’d prefer not to have a water tank at all in our roof.
e) we're ready to change pipework in the attic/roof-void, but we don’t want to run new pipes through the house to connect up with the boiler. We’d like to continue to be able to use showers in both bathrooms without worrying about pressure drops. We’re prepared to live with the extra cost of a separate attic hot water system (though we’d obviously like to keep running costs to the minimum)
f) we’d prefer a system that doesn’t require much maintenance.
So … what’s the best way of rationalising things, given that we are – I assume – stuck with an immersion-heater-only source of hot water?
- do we go for a Megaflow (we’ve heard good and bad reports; we don’t hugely like the idea of all that pressure or regular servicing)?
- should we be thinking of a thermal store (but we are in a hard-water area)?
- since the pipework’s all in place, should we just replace what we have with more of the same (with a titanium immersion heater) and live with a water tank in the roof? Have we just been unlucky with the problems with our pump? Would it be cost-effective to order a bespoke copper cylinder to gain maximum capacity from the awkward space which the attic-builders provided?
Apologies if I’ve left important info out: this really isn't my area.... All/any ideas hugely appreciated - thank you!
1. It’s a 5 bedroom/3-floor (including the attic conversion) house.
2. All the radiators run off a new Vaillant Ecomax 835E
3. This Vaillant also provides hot water to a bathroom on the first floor. The pressure is good enough for a very decent shower.
4. When the attic conversion was done, the bathroom up there was given a hot water supply which is independent of the rest of the house. This consists of a cold water tank in the roof void, feeding a traditional copper cylinder heated only by an immersion heater (not on an economy tariff) which supplies the attic bathroom via a (somewhat noisy) Stewart Turner pump. The pump supplies hot & cold to the bath and the power shower and hot-only to the basin. There is a (strong) cold mains feed to the basin and the toilet.
5. We are about to re-do the attic bathroom and – if we can do things better – would like to improve its hot water supply at the same time.
Our issues with the present hot water supply are:
a) the pump has broken down twice in recent years. On one occasion it leaked significantly, causing water damage to the room below. It would be good to eliminate this risk if possible.
b) the copper cylinder is 14 years old and already has a pinhole leak (at the very top, luckily), so will have to be replaced anyway.
c) the attic conversion company installed the cylinder first and built part of the attic around it. Replacing the immersion heater has therefore been a real nightmare. We could get the existing cylinder out, but in practice we’d have to replace it with a smaller cylinder – and the standard sizes which would fit in the space seem unlikely to cope well with our large bath & power shower.
d) in an ideal world, we’d prefer not to have a water tank at all in our roof.
e) we're ready to change pipework in the attic/roof-void, but we don’t want to run new pipes through the house to connect up with the boiler. We’d like to continue to be able to use showers in both bathrooms without worrying about pressure drops. We’re prepared to live with the extra cost of a separate attic hot water system (though we’d obviously like to keep running costs to the minimum)
f) we’d prefer a system that doesn’t require much maintenance.
So … what’s the best way of rationalising things, given that we are – I assume – stuck with an immersion-heater-only source of hot water?
- do we go for a Megaflow (we’ve heard good and bad reports; we don’t hugely like the idea of all that pressure or regular servicing)?
- should we be thinking of a thermal store (but we are in a hard-water area)?
- since the pipework’s all in place, should we just replace what we have with more of the same (with a titanium immersion heater) and live with a water tank in the roof? Have we just been unlucky with the problems with our pump? Would it be cost-effective to order a bespoke copper cylinder to gain maximum capacity from the awkward space which the attic-builders provided?
Apologies if I’ve left important info out: this really isn't my area.... All/any ideas hugely appreciated - thank you!
