Pumped shower pressure

rsynnott

Hi,
I've got a shower that runs off a pump. A previous apartment, with a similar-looking pump, had a shower that felt much higher pressure. Using a measuring jug and a stopwatch, I've found that this one puts out 9 to 10 litres per minute; the bathroom tap, running off the same pump, puts out ~6 per minute. A look around the internet indicates that a typical power shower does something like 15-20 litres per minute. I wouldn't mind a slightly more powerful shower and would be willing to put up with higher water usage.

What would the limiting factor be here? Is it a case of the power of the pump, or the control on the shower wall, or the pipe gauge, or the shower head itself?

Sleeper12

10 Liters per minute is the minimum for it to be classed as a power shower.

It's possible that the two pumps look alike but one may be more power full than the other.

It may be the shower head or hose restricting the flow

rsynnott

So I was looking into this a bit more.

The pump is a Monsoon 2.0 bar twin; docs claim it provides 2 bar pressure.

The showerhead is a Hansgrohe Croma Multi 100 (one of these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hansgrohe-HG28536000-Croma-Handheld-Shower/dp/B0018I2JM0). Docs claim that it's good for 19l/min.

The mixer is, I think, a Hansgrohe Ecostat 1001 SL (shower only version). The docs claim that at 2 bars it should be doing about 13l/min (see attached graph). The American docs for this mention adjusting it to limit flow to 2.5 g/min, or 9.4l/min (page 8: https://secure.img.wfcdn.com/docresources/821/2/26817.pdf), but it's not clear to me if this means adjusting it so that you have to push in the stop, or adjusting the absolute max. The European version of the docs don't mention adjusting flow at all.

Is it reasonable to assume that the documented numbers are pretty accurate for this sort of thing?

rsynnott

And just tried this with the shower head off, which I should have tried to start with

Got about 13l/sec, which is what it should be doing based on the manual above at 2 bars, vs about 9-10l/sec with the showerhead on. So the problem's probably the showerhead. Is some loss of flow expected with any showerhead, or would I get some improvement by replacing this one? Or should I be trying to descale it? It's a soft-water area, but I think it was installed about 10 years ago at this point.

Sleeper12

rsynnott wrote:

The mixer is, I think, a Hansgrohe Ecostat 1001 SL (shower only version). The docs claim that at 2 bars it should be doing about 13l/min (see attached graph). The American docs for this mention adjusting it to limit flow to 2.5 g/min, or 9.4l/min (page 8:

Some states in USA have a max flow rate of around 9 litres per minute so the USA manual is most likely showing how to reduce the flow rather than increase it

rsynnott

Okay, so this is annoying. My showerhead has "P-IX 18336/ID" printed on it (and no other model number). It turns out that there are two separate models with that code:

Normal version: https://pro.hansgrohe.de/articledetail-croma-100-croma-100-multi-handbrause-28536000.html

"Eco" (limited to 9l/min) version: https://pro.hansgrohe.de/articledetail-croma-100-croma-100-multi-handbrause-ecosmart-9-l-min-28538000.html

I can't see any way to tell the difference between these; however given that I get 13l/min with the showerhead off, and 9l/min with it on, I'm guessing I have the eco version...

It seems crazy that they'd have two different models with the same thing printed on them.

antoinolachtnai

Is it possible that there is a restrictor installed on it that could be removed?