Water Tank Advice Needed

[old wrinkly]

My wife and recently experienced a very bad underfloor (concrete) leak from the main inlet which our insurance company refused to pay out on as they said it was ground movement (our bungalow was built circa 1960).

To repair, the concrete floor had to be chased out and a new poly pipe fee installed. This was a major undertaking including having to uninstall/reinstall our shower in the main bathroom only fitted 10 months earlier.

During this work, my wife mentioned about pressure in the same bathroom shower being a bit slow and also how long it took for water to reach our en-suite extension.

To resolve this a Grundfos electric pump was fitted in the loft which was activated whenever hot/cold water was called for. This was OK but about a month later the pump failed. It seems, we were told, that either the cold water tank in the loft or the hot water tank had drained empty and the pump was burnt out.

The solution we were told, apart from replacing the pump, was to increase the rate at which the cold water tank filled by fitting a new valve.

Since then, for reasons I won't go into, the plumber has been erratic due to health and family issues.

I would appreciate advice on what I could do to increase the rate at which the water fills as so far I have not found anything that seems to fit the bill.

Thanks

 

[cross thread]

Larger tank, 3/4 inch ball valve valve instead of 1/2 inch are options

 

[old wrinkly]

Thanks, not sure about the larger tank as it will need a new "shelf" to stand on as the current one would be too small.. Perhaps it is the 3/4-inch ball valve he was talking about. Food for thought. Assume I would not need to change any other pipework??

 

[cross thread]

3/4 not as restrictive so should give better fill time assuming the supply is not poor

 

[terryplumb]

Do you know what your mains water pressure measures ? Do you know ,or can you measure ,the mains cold water flow rate from your garden tap ( if you have one) and cold water kitchen tap.
Are your mains cold water stopcocks open fully, the one where water enters the property and any external one ?

 

[old wrinkly]

Thanks, at the time of the water leak Anglian Water checked the pressure and it was
Boundary box is 3 bar static, 2.6 bar combined at 15 lpm.

Rear garden is only showing 1.5bar static drops to below 0 when tap open.

The rear garden is now 3 bar as per the boundary box since the leak was repaired.

Yes all cold water stopcocks are fully open.

 

[terryplumb]

Ok ,thanks ,but we don't know what the status is now. Run kitchen cold tap for 1 full ,timed,minute into a bucket or other container. Then measure how many litres of water are in the bucket . In essence ,if your cold water supply is giving less litres per minute, than the pump is delivering ,the loft tank will empty no matter what float valve size is fitted.
Bear in mind that when another tap / outlet is in use whilst shower is in use the inlet flow rate into the loft tank will be virtually halved.

 

[old wrinkly]

Thanks will try your suggestion and get back with the result.

 

[Madrab]

Can I suggest you also do the measurement with one outlet full open whilst filling from another, that should provide a dynamic figure.

What size in the cistern in the attic? Is the hot water cylinder in the attic too and what size is that? Size/make of pump?

 

[old wrinkly]

Hi, don't know size/capacity of the water tank. Not sure if I did this right but I used a bucket that has litre markings and filled that from an outside tap. The max capacity was 10 litres and this was achieved in 54 seconds. With another tap open there wasn't much difference, it got to 10 litres at 59.5 seconds.

The pump is a Grundfoss 1.5 bar.

 

[old wrinkly]

Hi, this is the state I have been left in. I have switched the pump on again to see what happens. My wife and I are thinking seriously of having the pipe work changed back to how it was originally i.e pump only serves the shower in the bathroom everything else is gravity-fed apart from the Aqualisa Quartz Classic we have in the en-suite which has been there for 20 plus years (pump has been changed under extended warranty at least twice). I have not found any info on being able to change the bar setting for this as the plumber suggested. Sadly, we are in the situation we are in as we were very grateful for all the work done to fix the underfloor leak but it does seem now that we have to sort out the current situation ourselves.

Might have the water tank inlet changed to 3/4 inch but I am not convinced that this was/is a problem as we never had the tank go dry when we had the original higher bar pump working just on the shower so why should it have gone dry with the lower bar pump. We never have both showers running at the same time.

Need to get the loft insulation sorted as it's in a real mess.