power shower or water boiler?

Nekarsulm

I have bought a bunch of suck calves, and need 20 gallons of warm watet twice daily. I have a good used Mira power shower unit lying around, can I use this to heat up the water or should I buy a boiler? Am I overlooking any obvious pitfalls?

C0N0R

I would have said to get 20 gallons with a Mira you could be waiting a while?

bbam

The problem with the shower is that to get the water hot enough you need to slow down the flow. So it would be slow.
Get a water heater of some sorts.

Nekarsulm

Ok, cheers guys.

Askim

How about old copper cylinder, insulate really well, 1" tap at bottom & new element on timer, & some kind of vent to allow for expansion & let air in when emptying, put fill on ball cock with tap, turn of tap when emptying & adjust temp to suit.

All the water you need, ready when you want it & if not enough in cylinder just heat hotter & add cold

A

Farmer Pudsey

Askim wrote: »

How about old copper cylinder, insulate really well, 1" tap at bottom & new element on timer, & some kind of vent to allow for expansion & let air in when emptying, put fill on ball cock with tap, turn of tap when emptying & adjust temp to suit.

All the water you need, ready when you want it & if not enough in cylinder just heat hotter & add cold

A

Water at bottom of cylinder will be cold. A immersion only reaches over half way down cylinder. Normally hot water is extracted from the top of cylinder and cold enters from the bottom

Timmaay

Farmer Pudsey wrote: »

Water at bottom of cylinder will be cold. A immersion only reaches over half way down cylinder. Normally hot water is extracted from the top of cylinder and cold enters from the bottom

A new fully insulated hot tank, and dual immersion element will set you back less than 200quid, claim back the vat also if its a new installation (capital expenditure), and put a clock on it to heat at the night rate only. Heating the likes of 20gls at night rate over day rate will add up over a year or so definitely and pay for the whole lot. Easy to install also, lower current wires needed than the power shower, which will definitely need an rcd also.

However both methods will need a cold water tank, as they can't take mains pressure.

bbam

We used the steel tank of a deep well pump.welded a socket to take an Emerson.

Cold water in the bottom, take hot off the top. Steel tank takes full mains water pressure but I fitted a pressure release valve on cold water supply.

Well lagged jacket and timer clock.

The longer it's on the more it heats the water and so feeds more calves.

I think €50 did the trick at the time. And we love up-cycling old junk here, saves a few Euro and flexes the engineering muscles in the brain.

bbam

Just remembered.
Lad not too far from here used an old twin tub.
It would heat the water, he could throw in the milk powder and he could leave it mixing while he was milking.
They had a manual control to move to the empty cycle and he could use the hose to fill it into buckets.

Obviously a domestic appliance in a wet dairy would be a recipe for an accident. But I would have loved to see it working.
Ingenious or crazy??

Nekarsulm

Bbam, love the TwinTub idea. appeals to my sense (or lack of it) of sideways engineering. Finding one could be the problem. Well remember the mother getting one when we were small, and the wheeling it into the kitchen, the excitement after the big upright thing with the powered roller mangle! Now there was a health and safety nightmare!

Going to look at a water heater for sale locally, lad who got out of cows a few years ago.

Great ideas, thanks.

Muckit

That wasn't a twin tub. Your thinking of the yokes they had before the twintubs came around. The twintub didn't wring out the clothes through a mangel, I remember well as my mother worked that time and it was my job to wash the clothes! You washed in the 'tub' on the left and then put the clothes into the tub(cylindrical with drain holes) on the right, that shook the bejaysus out of the load to drain the water out!!

Nekarsulm

Yeah, Muckit, that's what I thought I said. The twintub replaced the big cream coloured upright thing. (GEC, I think) If I remember right, there was a quick release catch on the mangle rollers, supposedly to get out clothes that wrapped round the rollers, bur really to get your kids fingers out!

bbam

Muckit wrote: »

That wasn't a twin tub. Your thinking of the yokes they had before the twintubs came around. The twintub didn't wring out the clothes through a mangel, I remember well as my mother worked that time and it was my job to wash the clothes! You washed in the 'tub' on the left and then put the clothes into the tub(cylindrical with drain holes) on the right, that shook the bejaysus out of the load to drain the water out!!

Ours had a mangle that fitted into holes between both tubs. So you took the clothes out if the wash tub. Fed them into the mangle and they fell into the spin tub.

Muckit

Well there possibly were different models so. But why would you need a mangel and a spin tub when you think about it? Ours was a hotpoint like this. They were very popular at the time.

bogman_bass

wow that brings me back! one of my earliest memories is playing with the cat in the utility room as my morther used the twin tub

Nekarsulm

Muckit wrote: »

Well there possibly were different models so. But why would you need a mangel and a spin tub when you think about it? Ours was a hotpoint like this. They were very popular at the time.

Snap, ours was the very same. Perhaps the knobs were square, but no other difference. Wouldn't mind, but it sat up on a loft for years, was weighed in only a few years ago.....