Poor hot water flow (pressure?) from bathroom taps & sho

[Bendigeidfran]

Hi all

I've recently moved house and this is my first experience with this type of water system so please bear with me!

The basics of the system:

1980's house.
Open vent system.
Cold water storage tank in the loft. Very shallow loft space so not much opportunity to raise the tank any further.
Hot water tank with additional immersion heater in the bedroom cupboard
Brand new conventional boiler in the kitchen - Glow worm Flexicom 15hx.
Very recent bathroom suite, bath and sink both have mixer taps connected with flexi hoses.
Bathroom cold water comes from the mains, not the cold water storage tank
Mixer shower attachment fitted to the bath taps.


Hot water flow (or pressure? I don't know which) is not too badat the kitchen, but upstairs it is poor. As you'd expect, the mixer taps are easily overwhelmed by the mains cold water to the point that you have to use so little cold that the shower is barely more than a trickle.

I don't want an electric shower but I am open to changing the current shower and/or taps.

Would some sort of pump from the hot water cylinder effectively raise the flow rate or pressure of the hot? I know you can get power showers but I thought those were for when you have low pressure hot and cold (which I don't)

Can anyone advise if the a hot water only pump would work, how would it be easiest/most efficiently installed, and if so what sort of pump would work best?

Access to the hot water tank and pipework is pretty good, see attached image

Shower flow, not great:

Hot tap on pretty much full:

Cold tap for comparison:

Any help appreciated

 

[JohnD]

Bathroom cold water comes from the mains, not the cold water storage tank
Mixer shower attachment fitted to the bath taps.

that is wrong, and fitted by someone who didn't know (or didn't care).

If you want a mixer shower that works, you are going to have to use both hot and cold water at the same pressure. You can run a cold pipe to the loft tank. The presure will be poor but you can fit a shower pump or a pumped shower if you can stand the expense and the noise.

If you have any other mixer taps fed that way, especially if they have ceramic disks and a joystick, you should be alert to the risk of high-pressure mains water squirting up the hot pipes and making your loft tank overflow.

 

[HERTS P&D]

Re plumb the cold bath tap to the cold water tank and fit a 2 bar pump.

Is the cold basin tap from the mains? if it is then leave it as it is, so that you can wash your teeth in clean water and get a drink from the basin rather than going downstairs a 2am.


Andy

 

[Bendigeidfran]

My gut feeling is that before we owned the house, it had a bath with separate taps for hot and cold, and no shower.

Next door neighbour seems to think this might the case as his house had a retrofitted electric shower when he bought it reasonably new.

When the previous owner of my house fitted the bathroom, I reckon he fitted these mixer taps with the shower attachment which has introduced this problem.

Looking around the 'net, it seems to be quite a common issue!

Thanks for the replies so far.

 

[Tom1981]

Off topic, your central heating pump is fitted incorrectly. It needs the head turning so the wires on the bottom

 

[Tom1981]

You need to find out what the static head is. The height the loft tank is mounted at determins your Hot water pressure.

You could also have a cylinder full of scale, you might find its blocking the cold inlet to your cylinder

 

[Bendigeidfran]

Off topic, your central heating pump is fitted incorrectly. It needs the head turning so the wires on the bottom

This doesn't surprise me, the relatively new mid position valve doesn't work, the brand new toilet has got a flush valve held together with silicone sealant and paper clips (well, it did until I replaced it all with a new Fluidmaster setup last weekend), you get the picture!