why cant we have showers like in Germany?

Irish and British plumbing is 'quirky' to say the least.

The main problem is that the water mains are undersized (deliberately) necessitating buffer tanks in the attics of houses as the flow rate's too low to cope with peak demand.

Basically, from my understanding of it, if everyone in your street were to run their showers from the water mains there would be insufficient flow and pressure to cope and the whole thing would reduce to a trickle. So, the attic tank allows high water usage to be buffered.

It's a bit like watching YouTube on dial up (Ireland/British plumbing) vs broadband (continental Europe/USA plumbing)

New Zealand used to have this system too, but only Britain and Ireland clung onto it.

Fitting a pump works well, but it's basically a 'hack' / 'work around' to get showers to up to a decent pressure. It shouldn't really be necessary if we had a properly designed water system.

While I know some British people will get highly defensive of their technical standards, some aspects of them are just ridiculously impractical.

I mean, take installing a socket in the wall. To install most continental sockets/switches you use a circular 'box'. So, basically you take a standardised core drill bit, hold it to the wall. Pop the box in. Fit the switch/socket.

In the British system - square boxes that require hacking of plaster.

We also have ENORMOUS plugs by any standard which are now proving to be impractical as people have more and more portable appliances like laptops. You do not need a plug large enough to supply a 3kW heater or tumble dryer on appliances drawing under 100watts and other systems reflect this by having various sizes of moulded-on plugs (earthed and unearthed) depending on the application.

The argument that they're safer, doesn't really stack up either. They're just fused because they have a 32 amp ring-circuit system permitted in the UK (And here to a lesser extent) that was introduced primarily to skimp on copper by avoiding radials.

In plumbing:

Insistance on using non-mixer taps all the time in public bathrooms. Scald/freeze your hands?
No isolation valves at sinks/toilets in most installtions.
Low water pressure and unhygienic attic tanks feeding systems.
The traditional hot water cylinder that we used for decades was basically a totally uninsulated copper tank. Who thought that was ever a good idea?!
Ugly drain pipes on the outside of buildings running through funnels and into open gullies.
The electric shower was popularised for some reason too when in reality it was developed to be retrofitted to the large % of British (and Irish) housing stock that had no form of central heating.

The other one that I do not get is that we use a lot of compression joints totally unnecessarily and where they cannot be accessed e.g. underground / behind walls. Where as on the continent all of those seals would be soldered !

As a small country we should be looking to take "the best of" European (including British) technical standards and not just doggedly following UK standards that often aren't exactly what you'd call well-thought-out.

Even if they're not a direct photocopy of British standards they are definitely 'heavily inspired by' them.
The fittings, fixtures and practices are extremely similar and not remotely similar to what's done on the continent in general. Electrical standards are some kind of odd hybrid of the two.

Biggest issue is totally inadequate water mains. If we'd larger, higher pressure mains, you'd have no need for pumps or any of that messy stuff.

I 100% agree though, there are way too many cowboys out there!
The standard of some of the work I've had done by people claiming to be plumbers is just mindbogglingly low.

gary71 wrote: »

I promise you very little of the work I see in Ireland matches or meets UK regs, for example you don't pump the mains in the manor which I see here(3 1/2 bar directly to the mains) I never would use a break tank for a domestic combi if the water mains is questionable, I would use stored hot water with a decent pumped shower. Since the 60s temperture of stored hot water was commonly controlled by a electric or mechanical means of control which is still not a given here, to fit unvented cylinders as mentioned already you are required to sit a 2 day safety course on safety and pass a test paper to be allowed to work on a cylinder and every cylinder is inspected by the local buildings inspector in Ireland there are no regs so most cylinders are fitted in a dangerous manor.

I am not a apologist for British or Irish plumbing but to judge a thing you must first be honest about what your judging and the comments above are disingenuous to the decent plumbers working here who's graft leads to installations that work with happy customers, the comments above are more connected to the undesirables who have no business working in people's homes.

I also said

The standard of some of the work I've had done by people claiming to be plumbers is just mindbogglingly low.

We had a guy arrive without even basic tools once! He made a complete hash of a simple repair (wasn't here at the time and he was paid about €500+ for it!).

The industry needs proper regulation.

Is there actually *any* regulation in Ireland regarding water plumbing fixtures/fittings, pipe sizes etc or is it all just some mystical set of conventions based in common law or something ?