How did I have hot water?

[JP_]

I know this is a question impossible to answer, but I am curios to know if anybody can take a well educated guess. It's only after doing some renovations in the last few years, and seeing all my plumbing and heating in the flesh, that this for some reason occurred to me.

In 1999 I bought a small 1 bed flat in Walthamstow, I think the building was constructed in around 1990ish. When we moved in, there is an electric shower, and we had a gas stove fitted. Previous people had electric oven, and I remember dealing with the gas company to get an account set up (I remember as there was confusion, as BG thought there was no gas supply, and their records said it was never connected, but I told them although no meter to be seen, we do have a gas pipe in the kitchen where the cooker needs to go).

Heating was 1 storage heater in bedroom, and an oil filled radiator mounted on the wall in the lounge. That was it. The flat was very small (kitchen was alcove to lounge).

What is bugging me though, is where did my hot water come from? I guess there must have been an electric water heater somewhere, although I have no recollection of one. The kitchen was very basic, with little curtains instead of doors for the cupboards, so I'm sure I'd remember a big electric water heater ... but maybe I have just forgotten about it.

This is very similar to how I remember my flat being

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[Deleted member 294929]

Was there any green ponds local to the flat?

If so the hot water they generate may be the answer.

Was the water green?

 

[JP_]

There used to be a lovely green pond close by, but it got drained so we could have a car park.

 

[Deleted member 294929]

Maybe an underground green pond. They work just as well

 

[Ihavenojob]

What is bugging me though, is where did my hot water come from?

The hot tap would be my guess.
You may have had a communal hot water system, paid with your maintenance charge.

 

[fillyboy]

 

[JP_]

Ha! There's one similar on the market right now, so hopefully they can

The hot tap would be my guess.
You may have had a communal hot water system, paid with your maintenance charge.

Do such things exist in the uk? Everything was very basic, but Def had hot water in basin and kitchen sink. No electric hot taps.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

Was the shower unit within the shower cubicle or outside of it? If outside then it may have been an unvented electric water heater, feeding both the shower and the hot taps elsewhere.

Alternatively there may have been one of these under the kitchen sink in addition to the electric shower, possibly also feeding the bathroom.

 

[Deleted member 294929]

Ha! There's one similar on the market right now, so hopefully they can

Do such things exist in the uk? Everything was very basic, but Def had hot water in basin and kitchen sink. No electric hot taps.

Yes but big blocks of flats

 

[fillyboy]

About 20-25 years ago I was working in a flat in St Johns Wood, London. It was a council block although over half had been sold off, maintenance and parking was still council controlled, hallways were cleaned daily and there was even a 'concierge' of sorts. The block was maybe 5 or 6 stories high, 5 or 6 flats on each floor.

Anyway, half the ground floor or basement consisted of a boiler room, owners had the choice of 'free' hot water, or 'free' heating. Of course it wasn't free, it was built into the maintenance charges, not sure why they couldn't include both but that's how it was.

I was doing a semi refurb and the plumber turned up to do some stuff, this flat had heating via the communal boiler and hot water was provided by a small combi boiler built into a cupboard over the bath. The plumber fitted a new boiler, and amongst other things, the owner asked the plumber to cap off the shower outlet on the bath mixer tap and remove the shower kit, which he did.

Now the owner turned up to do some cleaning and and when running the bath taps, both hot and cold, she somehow discovered that she could turn off the water, not by turning off both taps, but by simply pulling up the knob that diverts the water from the taps to the shower (which had been blanked off).

About three months later, they got a bill for several thousand pounds from British Gas or whoever as there was a problem in that in every other flat in the block, their cold water would run hot, I can only assume that both taps over the bath turned on but switched off to the shower outlet opened it to the main system, so every time someone in the block turned on a cold tap, it fired up their combi.

 

[Justin Passing]

"District" heating sounds likely. And poor bath/shower mixers are famous for passing water between hot & cold.

 

[JohnD]

Ha! There's one similar on the market right now, so hopefully they can

Do such things exist in the uk? Everything was very basic, but Def had hot water in basin and kitchen sink. No electric hot taps.

IIRC there used to be district heating using local power stations. Usually in council redevelopment.

 

[gas112]

possibly Something like this in a cupboard under or near sink only about 18 inches high

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[blup]

.

 

[JohnD]

"In the 1950s, the UK built its first district heating network to reduce carbon emissions and operational costs. This was the Pimlico District Heating Undertaking (PDHU), which used waste heat from the old Battersea Power Station that was transported to Pimlico by being pumped under the River Thames.

Within eight years of being connected to the district heating system, Battersea had become one of the world’s most efficient power stations of its time, operating with a thermal efficiency of 25 percent.

The district heating in Pimlico has since transitioned to a new energy centre to heat the water and is still operational today."