Water Pressure via Electric Shower ?

[cptwhite_uk]

Vini do you have hot and cold water tanks or an combi boiler. Water tanks are the older method but I still think they're the best option for various reasons:

If your boiler breaks you can still get hot water via electricty (immersion heater in the hot water tank)
You can have a power shower (mixes the water from the two tanks and then pressurises via a seperate pump). You're not relying on mains water pressure, or a heating element to output enough flowrate at a given temp.
The water is heated via gas (your boiler) instead of electricity, which I believe is still considerably cheaper in terms of your fuel bill.

[GoNz0]

one of the reasons i have a UPS running the heating as well as the pc room (both in the same room) so i can shower during a power cut


you need to turn the water off and isolate the mains to check the filter

trouble is people get used to the flow dropping over x years and live with it, chance is its just a filter blocked (page 17 of the instruction booklet on screwfix) http://www.screwfix.com/prods/35910/...ink-_-Na-_-Na#

[Funkstar]

My shower is 7.5kw, an 8.5kw sounds like a suitable drowning to me!


Is there anyway to tell what sort of system your shower is, or does it take a plumber to have a good poke around behind the scenes to figure it out? It is something I will need to look at in the future but seeing as this thread is on the right subject, might see if I can scim some prior knowledge of it first!

Is your shower a cream box hung on the wall and a large red power stich either on the outside of the bathroom or a pull cord mounted to the cieling? That is an electric shower.

99% of them will be Mira Sports.

If you have to mess about with bath taps to get the shower going, that is a plumbed system that gets hot water from the boiler. Probably a power shower if you are in a flat, perhaps not if you have a hot water tank upstairs to get decent pressure.

[Steve]

one of the reasons i have a UPS running the heating as well as the pc room (both in the same room) so i can shower during a power cut ]

Your UPS is hooked up to your heating? Does that give you 30 seconds of heat in a power cut, or does your UPS Look like this:

[Vini]

Your UPS is hooked up to your heating? Does that give you 30 seconds of heat in a power cut, or does your UPS Look like this...

ha, awesome



We have a Combi, relatively new, pressure is fine throughout the house. Just the shower and I do rather like to shower

[Funkstar]

Your UPS is hooked up to your heating? Does that give you 30 seconds of heat in a power cut, or does your UPS Look like this:

GoNz0 has talked about this before. The UPS is on a gas heating system and just maintains the control and ingition systems, so in reality it probably uses very little power. This is something that would have been good for my better half this winter. Despite having oil fired heating, they were without power for periods of time due to the snow. Although she was lucky, as she was at the start of the mains cable run into the village, she had power a lot sooner than the rest.

[paul_william]

i think there may a problem with water pressure. so, you have to put water pump to main supply pipe.

[Steve]

i think there may a problem with water pressure. so, you have to put water pump to main supply pipe.

I think you're a spammer, and that you should shove a supply pipe where the sun don't sine.

[Andeh13]

Is your shower a cream box hung on the wall and a large red power stich either on the outside of the bathroom or a pull cord mounted to the cieling? That is an electric shower.

99% of them will be Mira Sports.

If you have to mess about with bath taps to get the shower going, that is a plumbed system that gets hot water from the boiler. Probably a power shower if you are in a flat, perhaps not if you have a hot water tank upstairs to get decent pressure.

Thank you! I have a power shower, so just to check all I would need to do it to replace the shower unit providing the wiring can take the additional juice being pulled through?


(sorry to hijack the thread Vini)

[Sputnik]

Vini do you have hot and cold water tanks or an combi boiler. Water tanks are the older method but I still think they're the best option for various reasons:

If your boiler breaks you can still get hot water via electricty (immersion heater in the hot water tank)
You can have a power shower (mixes the water from the two tanks and then pressurises via a seperate pump). You're not relying on mains water pressure, or a heating element to output enough flowrate at a given temp.
The water is heated via gas (your boiler) instead of electricity, which I believe is still considerably cheaper in terms of your fuel bill.

Another reason for having a hot water tank is that if there are other people in the house that might start turning the hot taps on while your in the shower, You can just enjoy a continuous temperature without them influencing it.

When I was young we used to have a 4kW electric shower and in the winter you had to restrict the flow to almost a dribble to get it warm enough. It used to have a manual water valve on the supply pipe to the shower and another flow valve to fine tune the heat. IIRC it had 3 elements so you could adjust the heat electrically too something like 2,3 or 4kW.

[Funkstar]

Thank you! I have a power shower, so just to check all I would need to do it to replace the shower unit providing the wiring can take the additional juice being pulled through?


(sorry to hijack the thread Vini)

Wait, hang on. A "Power shower" get hot water from the boiler and uses a pump located somewhere under the bath/shower to pump the water out giving yoiu massive flow rates at whaterver temperature yoiu set and your boiler can produce. An electric shower just gets a cold feed and heats that. The more power it can draw the hotter or more flow it can produce.

Power showers only use a pump so don't need much electricity. Electric shower have large heating elements and need lots of power. This is the kind you need to check your cabling for. You should really have a 10mm/sq twin and earth cable for the 45amp load on a 10.5KW shower, according to this sample (PDF) instructions anyway.

[peterb]

Some power showers have a pump in the unit. They still take a hot and cold feed, but the pump is a single ended unit that pumps the output of the mixer valve to the showerhead. They can be easier to fit than a twin ended pump that pump[s the hot and cold feeds to the shoer mixer valve.

[Andeh13]

Looks like more research into my setup is needed, thanks for the heads up though!

[cptwhite_uk]

I bought my pump for the power shower on Ebay in the end, cost about £160 2 years ago so that's roughly how much you should expect to pay.

Note that they can be quite noisy but I guess that's true with all of them unless you pay a lot more than I did. Mine was marketted as quiet and was a mid-range pump. It's good enough for me, and gives decent flow rate but I wouldn't want it to be any louder. I can find the manufacturer if anyones interested.

[peterb]

Two of the main pump mfrs are Salamander and Monsoon. Salamander are available from Screwfix. Monsoon are supposed to be better construction and cost a little more. I have fitted a couple (of monsoons) and tghey are quite quiet - a lot depends on the surface they are mounted on - they free stand on rubber pads and come complete with four flexible hoses to further reduce noise.

I bought mine from http://www.h-i-e.co.uk/acatalog/stuart_turner.html (partly because their warehouse isn't to far away, and partly because their prices were pretty good. I fitted the 2 bar pumps - which I find sufficient - but the higher the pressure, the greater the flow (and the more water you will use, and the faster you will use the hot water. One thing to consider tis that if you ghave too great a flow you will empty the cold water tank - even with the 2 bar pump it empties the CW tank faster than it fills, but unless you spend a long time under it or have a small CW tank, it isn't a problem.

One feeds two showers and is capable of powering both at the same time and was installed because the height of the cold water tank was'n't high enough to give a good flow. It was so good I fitted another in the main bathroom. I'm thinking about fitting a single ended one to improve flow to a narrow bore kitchen tap.

You will need to take the CW feed from a separate exit point on the tank, so you will need to drain it and curt a hole for it. This should be lower than the take off for the HW tank so that if you do empty the tank, the hot water stops first.

Ideally you should have a separate feed from the HW tank too, but to save drilling into the cylinder I used this. Screfix do quite a lot of shower stuff, as do the people I linked to earlier.

[GoNz0]

Your UPS is hooked up to your heating? Does that give you 30 seconds of heat in a power cut, or does your UPS Look like this:

not quite, just ran an extra power cable to the combi when i plumbed in my online ups