Weird mix of electric and standard showers...

[Darthy_P]

Hi gang,
Just moved into a house, built in the 1990s, it's got oil-fired central heating and a hot water tank. Two bathrooms upstairs, two downstairs.

Three out of four bathrooms have an electric shower - it's just one upstairs shower that's fed off the hot water tank.

I can't figure out the reason for theis setup. We're going to remodel the bathrooms and I'd be inclined to change the showers to be fed off the hot water, as the electric showrs are rubbish. Plus at the moment we barely use the upstairs shower so we're heating a big hot water tank just to run the hot taps in the sinks, which seems pretty wasteful.

Water pressure in the upstairs shower is good, and the hot water tank is quite big.

But will there have been a reason for this setup? Something I'm missing?

 

[Madrab]

Chances are it's either because it was easier not to run both water supplies or the electric showers were rarely used and the previous owner mostly used the upstairs shower.

Always good to keep one as a backup if the HW ever fails.

 

[Darthy_P]

Cheers for the response.
I did wonder if it just saved plumbing in a second pipe, although the shower is right next to the sink and they must have had to run the electricals up to it, so barely a time-saver?

And yeah, I think we'd keep one of the electric ones for backup but I'm minded to get the other two piped up to the HW tank when we redo the bathrooms.

 

[oldbutnotdead]

How big is the cylinder? If it's a standard 150l sort of thing then 3 showers will quickly deplete it. If you have the space you could look at an additional cylinder & header tank or a bigger cylinder & tank

 

[Darthy_P]

162l.
And having just Googled the "average" volume of a shower or bath, it seems like you're right!

 

[oldbutnotdead]

Mmm. Still cheaper heating water with gas or oil than with electric. Worth having a think about how you'll use the house- if all bathrooms are getting used at the same/similar times it'll be worth beefing the hot water storage volume up. V wise keeping one electric for in case

 

[flameport]

Unless that house has a 3 phase supply (exceptionally unlikely), using those 3 electric showers at the same time would be grossly overloading the electrical supply.

 

[oldbutnotdead]

Unless that house has a 3 phase supply (exceptionally unlikely), using those 3 electric showers at the same time would be grossly overloading the electrical supply.

Ah yes, very valid point

 

[Madrab]

Unless that house has a 3 phase supply (exceptionally unlikely), using those 3 electric showers at the same time would be grossly overloading the electrical supply.

Unless they're all 7.5Kw on a 100A supply, wouldn't be able to run much more tho