Dear All
I have done a fair bit of reading and have tried searching, but the only question I could find that relates to the issue I am having was unanswered: forgive me if this has already been covered.
I have just moved into a house that I have renovated, this was mostly DIY as cost was an issue (Essex is flippin' expensive!).
The property was in a poor state and has had a new bathroom, new flooring, redec and so on. BIG solutions will, therefore not be suitable as they will undo the work already done.
The new bathroom has a shower over bath off a ceramic bath filler mixer. The cold water is mains and the hot water is low pressure vented direct (econmoy 7) cylinder in the airing cupboard, fed from a tank in the loft ~2m head (0.2bar).
The low pressure hot water feeds the shower head with passable, if uninspring, pressure and flow. This is overwhelmed, however, by the cold as soon as you open the cold tap. It is *possible* to introduce some cold into the hot by just nudging the tap open, but it is fiddly to do, and is on a knife edge between hot and cold. When you do finally get it balanced, the temperature fluctuates as the non return valves in the tap 'fight' each other.
Prior to buying the house to renovate, I was renting an identical house at the other end of the street. This had low pressure cold & hot in the bathroom and the bath filler mixer shower arrangement was satisfactory. This lead me into a false sense of security that a shower over bath would work.
My question is: how do I fix this issue? The previous occupiers had a shower over bath without issue, but this was with an old style bath filler whith rubber gasket type taps. I suspect these allow for greater adjustment of pressure then a ceramic cartridge.
As a side note: the basin filler hot flow is also now pretty pathetic as the old 15mm tails have been replaced with the microbore flexis required by a ceramic monoblock mixer.
The ideas I have:
1) Install valve in cold feed under the bath, and turn this down to reduce cold water pressure when running (standing pressure remains the same).
Pros: Cheap, easy to do.
Cons: Bodgy-Bodgy!
2) Install PEV under bath to bring the cold pressure down to match the hot.
Pros: Cheap-ish, DIY-able.
Cons: Does not sort sink, brings pressure and flow down to lowest common denominator, possible slow bath fill
3) Install single impeller 1.5bar pump to hot (in airing cupboard), thus pressurising hot throughout house. Fit 1.5bar pressure limiter to cold supply at stopcock.
Pros: Good hot pressure everywhere (inc Kitchen).
Cons: Pump running when any tap open, not sure on regs, cost?
4) Replace vented hot tank with unvented, providing mains hot water everywhere.
Pros: fixes everything, old copper tank is already ancient and poorly insulated.
Cons: cost & complexity.
5) Replace bath filler with thermostatic veturi bath filler mixer like in a hotel.
Pros: easy to do, solves the main problem.
Cons: item required does not seem to exist...
I appreciate that the above is a lot to wade through, but as you can see I have spent a lot of time in the bath thinking about why the shower doesn't work!
I have done a fair bit of reading and have tried searching, but the only question I could find that relates to the issue I am having was unanswered: forgive me if this has already been covered.
I have just moved into a house that I have renovated, this was mostly DIY as cost was an issue (Essex is flippin' expensive!).
The property was in a poor state and has had a new bathroom, new flooring, redec and so on. BIG solutions will, therefore not be suitable as they will undo the work already done.
The new bathroom has a shower over bath off a ceramic bath filler mixer. The cold water is mains and the hot water is low pressure vented direct (econmoy 7) cylinder in the airing cupboard, fed from a tank in the loft ~2m head (0.2bar).
The low pressure hot water feeds the shower head with passable, if uninspring, pressure and flow. This is overwhelmed, however, by the cold as soon as you open the cold tap. It is *possible* to introduce some cold into the hot by just nudging the tap open, but it is fiddly to do, and is on a knife edge between hot and cold. When you do finally get it balanced, the temperature fluctuates as the non return valves in the tap 'fight' each other.
Prior to buying the house to renovate, I was renting an identical house at the other end of the street. This had low pressure cold & hot in the bathroom and the bath filler mixer shower arrangement was satisfactory. This lead me into a false sense of security that a shower over bath would work.
My question is: how do I fix this issue? The previous occupiers had a shower over bath without issue, but this was with an old style bath filler whith rubber gasket type taps. I suspect these allow for greater adjustment of pressure then a ceramic cartridge.
As a side note: the basin filler hot flow is also now pretty pathetic as the old 15mm tails have been replaced with the microbore flexis required by a ceramic monoblock mixer.
The ideas I have:
1) Install valve in cold feed under the bath, and turn this down to reduce cold water pressure when running (standing pressure remains the same).
Pros: Cheap, easy to do.
Cons: Bodgy-Bodgy!
2) Install PEV under bath to bring the cold pressure down to match the hot.
Pros: Cheap-ish, DIY-able.
Cons: Does not sort sink, brings pressure and flow down to lowest common denominator, possible slow bath fill
3) Install single impeller 1.5bar pump to hot (in airing cupboard), thus pressurising hot throughout house. Fit 1.5bar pressure limiter to cold supply at stopcock.
Pros: Good hot pressure everywhere (inc Kitchen).
Cons: Pump running when any tap open, not sure on regs, cost?
4) Replace vented hot tank with unvented, providing mains hot water everywhere.
Pros: fixes everything, old copper tank is already ancient and poorly insulated.
Cons: cost & complexity.
5) Replace bath filler with thermostatic veturi bath filler mixer like in a hotel.
Pros: easy to do, solves the main problem.
Cons: item required does not seem to exist...
I appreciate that the above is a lot to wade through, but as you can see I have spent a lot of time in the bath thinking about why the shower doesn't work!
