New House: Combi Boiler and header tank in loft question

[flyingmike]

Morning!

I have just bought a house (my first house!) When I first moved in I noticed that strange noises (like a waterfall) came from the loft when I flushed the toilet or used the upstairs bathroom cold tap, the pressure is also quite low. Having had a central heating guy in to put in an additional radiator I asked him and he said the old tank would now be redundant with the combi boiler being fitted. Anyway, after hearing the noises again I had an explore and lifted the lid on the plastic tank in the loft to find that it was full or water! a few tests showed this was supplying the toilet and cold tap in the bathroom sink (not sure about the bath cold tap yet).

I cant quite understand why this would be? and why they would not just use the mains supply?

As there is a mains water supply going in to the tank and then a pipe coming out to feed the toilet and cold taps can I just join these pipes together to bypass the header tank and supply everying off the mains water supply?

Thanks in advance

Mike

 

[ianmcd]

the setup has been left that way so that if the water supply to your property was interupted for any reason you will still be able to flush your toilet a few times and it eases the demand on the water mains in your area, it is possible to link it all to mains but you will have to replace the restrictor in the water tower in your WC cistern at the same time

 

[CBF]

you will have to replace the restrictor in the water tower in your WC cistern at the same time

whatever that is ?

 

[flyingmike]

Hi, Thanks for the info! yes, that sounds reasonable to me. The toilet fills very slowly, do you think the restrictor may still be in there?

Mike

 

[neiltheplumber]

Remove tank and convert to mains, easy job. If its a large tank and now only feeds your whb and wc then it will probably have a low turn over rate and have biofilm and be a health risk (Pseudomonas aeruginosa).

With regards to your cistern, you will need to replace the ball valve orifice from low pressure to high pressure, again a simple job.

Ps don't worry about the health risks too much it's more of a problem in commercial builds I just like saying pseudomonas aeruginosa?

 

[ianmcd]

yes you will have a low pressure one fitted as the cistern at present is fed from the storage in the loft , but if you convert this to mains you will have to fit the mains pressure one, depending on how old your cistern is there may be a high pressure one attached to it ,if not your local plumbing merchants will sell you one they are not expensive a few quid at most and very easily swapped

 

[flyingmike]

ok, I`ll have to look at the cistern a little closer. It really is slow at filling so maybe it has the high pressure fitting still in slowing it down even more.

Agreed, I dont think I would like to wash my teeth in it too much. I looked in the tank and its not that clean. The tank is plastic but must be as old as the house (50 years or so) as the tank wont fit through the loft hatch. So it might stay up there forever, but not used

 

[ianmcd]

Most people just leave them in situ unless converting the loft into a room of some sort and then cut them up to get them down, yes it might have a high pressure one fitted, depends when the toilet was installed, from memory they are red or white but cant remember which is high and which is low, Im not a plumber I am a gas engineer and we back link storage systems sometimes when fitting boilers and putting a low pressure one on a high pressure system causes overflow problems the other way round just causes slow filling as you have , Im sure a plumber will jump in and tell you what colour is which