Debris in shower pump filter

[mike42]

HI

I know I had another thread open in Januray but wanted to start this to get straight to the point so people don't need to read a lot of not that relevant preamble.....

Anyway, our shower has suffered from erratic pressure and after taking advice from the other thread I finally got round to looking at it. The filter from the hot inlet to the pump was clogged with plastic debris that looked like the trimmings from when the cold water tank was installed (at the same time but wasn't evidently flushed).

Anyway, I remove them and the shower is a bit better but still the pressure varies a lot. Given the filter was a simple grid, I think some of the plastic shaviongs could have made it through and further upstream certainly into the pump but maybe on to the mixer?

The problem I have is that the mixer is embedded in the wall so I'm thinking of cleaning it out by sending a jet of water at mains pressure the wrong way round - my theory being that any debris pressed against an incoming filter might just work its way lose if water is forced the wrong way.

Does that sound a reasonable approach?

 

[muggles]

Err, no, not really. Your shower valve will almost certainly have built-in non return valves and won't let you do this

 

[mike42]

arrgghh. So the only way would be to break into the wall and access the mixer inlets?

 

[muggles]

If your shower valve was installed properly you should be able to service it from behind the cover plate. If it wasn't, then you're going to have a smashing time sorting this out

 

[stardanny]

Can you tell us what the make of shower you got? If you know, I can check if it got nrv fitted....

Daniel.

 

[mike42]

lol.

If it was installed properly, I guess they would have flushed the system before commissioning and at the very least not left a mug full of plastic shavings floating in the cold water tank.

They might also have not left it leaking in the shower tray and they might not have lost the first shower trap that is bespoke to the tray under the floorboards after the tiles were laid. They might also have asked if they didn't understand the instructions on how to install an expensive shower door or an off-the-floor wc with cistern in the wall that didn't flush until I went through the instructions with a fine tooth comb and corrected the installation mistakes. They might also have left us with an (yes expensive) mixer whose controls don't fall off into the hand and requires bending down to see where the "stop" position is.

But they didn't - I guess they have different regs where they grew up - and atm I'm left trying to fix the problems in order of priority and the variable pressure is first on my list...

 

[mike42]

Just noticed StarDanny's post. The mixer is a Grohe 35500 & 19567 Rapido T BIV .

If it helps, if its been fitted so that there is no hard-stop. So stop the shower you have to rotate the knob so that it sits exactly inbetween selecting overhead shower and hand-shower which is difficult. To be honest, I'm thinking of ripping the whole thing out and fitting something else either by doing what I should have done and paid full whack to a good local plumber or doing it myself slowly and carefully.