Considering moving tank in hot press - is this a big job?

pug_

There is a lot of wasted space in our hot press that could be easily enough reclaimed by raising the tank by about 4-5 feet and tidying up the pipes a bit.

At the moment the hot press has the tank right smack bang in the middle of the press right out in the front. There is a staircase underneath so there is no room to move it down, and no shelf space below it. We have one shelf above the tank that we have to pile everything onto, and even though this has the potential to go all the way up to the roof we can only use a small portion of it due to the fact that we're not supergiants and don't want to have to grab a ladder every time some clothes need airing.

So here's what I was hoping to do.

1) Move the tank up to the top half of the hot press, which will leave room near the bottom for shelving, and in theory should give better pressure for the hot water due to the extra height.

2) Put a little door in the top half of the wall for access to the tank. The hot press is on a corner and there is a normal height door at the moment, and a whole wall that can we could get a carpenter to put in an access door near the top for.

3) Have the bits we'll need for every day access to at the bottom of the press, on/off switch really, but anything else that might be required I've no clue about plumbing.

So my question is does this sound feasible/worthwhile, and if so ballpark how much are we talking to get it done?

AverageJoe82

its a simple enough really, all your doing is, turning off water drainig, your cylinder and extending a few pipes , should take no more than 2-3 hours

pug_

Cheers for the reply, what about cost? I'm finding it hard to find a reliable, reasonable, local plumber. I've had a couple of of plumbers in doing small jobs, but the quality of their work would not entice me to ask them back again. I'm utterly clueless about plumbing so any guidelines as to whether I'm being misquoted or not would be appreciated.

With regards to the pipes, the way they are put in at the moment is a bit of a joke, they're just coming out of random points of the wall and take up more than half the press - literally. I'd like to get them tidied up a bit and the ones that come from the attic pulled back into the wall and brought out again closer the tank's new position. ideally I want to make maximum use of the space that we have and not have it taken up with pipes taking unusually long routes around the inside of the hot press. Will this add much to the cost given that the wall will have to be re-plastered too?

Also what about the weight of the tank? I'd imagine I'd need to put in additional supports to take the weight of the tank when it's full of water, is this something I should get done beforehand, or would a decent plumber be able to advise in this regard?

sullzz

AverageJoe82 wrote: »

its a simple enough really, all your doing is, turning off water drainig, your cylinder and extending a few pipes , should take no more than 2-3 hours

How can you say that , you need to drain the cylinder and the heating , build a base strong enough to take the weight of the weight cylinder when full of water , alter the plumbing and heating pipework , possibly extend the cable for the immersion , clear all airlocks that may occur , its impossible to give a timescale or price without seeing the job .

AverageJoe82

as a qualified plumber with many years experience of installing heating into homes which never had heating in them, i can tell you its not a big job to build a elevated base and tidy up the pipework, if u pm a picture of the hotpress i can give you a qoute

JohnnieK

With copper I hope. And dont forget to put inhibitor in when filling the heating up again.

It also wont increase the pressure of the hot water as this is determined by the height of the tank in the attic.

What your asking for is possible, I've done it for my cousin. I cant say a price because I didn't charge him.

Also you need room above the cylinder to remove the immersion should it ever fail, depending on the size of the cylinder this could be up to 2 foot or more.