We moved into our current house 12 months ago and the hot water system has been driving me more and more mad. We have a standard old fashioned gravity fed system with loft cold water tank and a hot water tank on the first floor in a bedroom cupboard. I have no idea whether my toilets are on mains or not. My practical problems are this:
1. We have three bathrooms upstairs, but only two bathrooms have a shower pump (one for each bathroom). The third bathroom is unpumped and the water flow is so bad that neither of us use that bathroom any more, even though it is the main bathroom.
2. I use the en suite next to our bedroom and the hot water takes, literally, at least 5 minutes if not longer to reach the taps and/or shower. We are on metered water .....
3. We have just had a new kitchen installed and although I specifically went looking for a fairly low pressure tap, the hot water feed to the tap is pitiful.
4. I wanted to install one of those new Quooker boiling water taps in the new kitchen, but they apparently need at least [something or other; 1 maybe] bar of cold water, which I know we don't have.
I called in a local plumbing firm a couple of months ago to look at it all and specify something. I had asked whether a megaflow type cylinder would help - ie at least going mains pressure for the hot water and putting it all into the middle of the loft so that it was a bit closer to my en suite shower to get the hot water there more quickly. Plumbing firm (very well regarded locally and not cow boys) said that the whole hot water system was a mess and had been put together in a piecemeal (and bad) fashion - eg shower pumps located in the loft miles away from the hot water tank). He said our mains pressure was not good enough to warrant a megaflow by itself, and that we would need an accumulator and he said something about a pump (which would have to go into the loft because we had no other available outhouse space and he muttered something about potential noise). Anyway, the overall quote was over £6000.
We don't have that kind of money to boost water pressure right now.
I've been reading online about whole house pumps, and different kinds of pumps (eg twin or single). I'm obviously not planning on installing anything myself, but before I get the next plumber in I'd like to be fore-warned over the options I could ask him to advise on / quote for, because I'm worried that I may have asked for gold plated taps, so to speak, and that's exactly what I've been given, rather than some-one suggesting that something completely different might do the job just as well.
Can anyone give me any thoughts given my problems (ie mini pumps all over the place, and if I continue with that route I'll need to instal at least one other mini pump for the main bathroom, and that still doesn't solve how long it takes to get hot water to my en suite, or the kitchen tap ...). And I hate pump noise - I experienced that in an old house before we converted to a combi (high mains pressure there though).
Thanks in advance for help .....
1. We have three bathrooms upstairs, but only two bathrooms have a shower pump (one for each bathroom). The third bathroom is unpumped and the water flow is so bad that neither of us use that bathroom any more, even though it is the main bathroom.
2. I use the en suite next to our bedroom and the hot water takes, literally, at least 5 minutes if not longer to reach the taps and/or shower. We are on metered water .....
3. We have just had a new kitchen installed and although I specifically went looking for a fairly low pressure tap, the hot water feed to the tap is pitiful.
4. I wanted to install one of those new Quooker boiling water taps in the new kitchen, but they apparently need at least [something or other; 1 maybe] bar of cold water, which I know we don't have.
I called in a local plumbing firm a couple of months ago to look at it all and specify something. I had asked whether a megaflow type cylinder would help - ie at least going mains pressure for the hot water and putting it all into the middle of the loft so that it was a bit closer to my en suite shower to get the hot water there more quickly. Plumbing firm (very well regarded locally and not cow boys) said that the whole hot water system was a mess and had been put together in a piecemeal (and bad) fashion - eg shower pumps located in the loft miles away from the hot water tank). He said our mains pressure was not good enough to warrant a megaflow by itself, and that we would need an accumulator and he said something about a pump (which would have to go into the loft because we had no other available outhouse space and he muttered something about potential noise). Anyway, the overall quote was over £6000.
We don't have that kind of money to boost water pressure right now.
I've been reading online about whole house pumps, and different kinds of pumps (eg twin or single). I'm obviously not planning on installing anything myself, but before I get the next plumber in I'd like to be fore-warned over the options I could ask him to advise on / quote for, because I'm worried that I may have asked for gold plated taps, so to speak, and that's exactly what I've been given, rather than some-one suggesting that something completely different might do the job just as well.
Can anyone give me any thoughts given my problems (ie mini pumps all over the place, and if I continue with that route I'll need to instal at least one other mini pump for the main bathroom, and that still doesn't solve how long it takes to get hot water to my en suite, or the kitchen tap ...). And I hate pump noise - I experienced that in an old house before we converted to a combi (high mains pressure there though).
Thanks in advance for help .....
