Replacing a thermostatic shower with electric?

hooplah

Question

I broke the temperature control in the upstairs shower last week and am now wondering what to do.

We are tempted to replace the thermostatic shower with an electric power shower. Would this be expensive?

Is it better to leave it as a thermostatic shower and somehow improve the performance?

Background

We did our house up a couple of years ago and put thermostatic showers into the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms, there's a pump beside the hot water cylinder which powers these.

Performance wise the upstairs shower was never fantastic - it was always difficult to reduce the temperature. The builder claimed that the tank in the attic needed to be raised but he vanished off the scene before ever doing so. We have a low enough ceiling in the atic so it could really only be raised by a couple of feet max.

hooplah

Would really appreciate some advice on this if anyone has the time to take a look at it.

Paullimerick

Is the only problem with the shower upstairs apart from the broken knob. The fact u can't regulate it. I would go with the same again.

It sounds like a restriction on the cold water that stops the mixing. A good quality shower and pipe work well flushed out before installing it.

Sleeper12

Electric showers are a compromise. Instant hot water but not great pressure. Electric shower puts out 3 litres of warm water per minute on a cold day and up to 5 on a really warm day. You are getting 10 to 15 litres of water per minute with the power shower. Electric shower is 650 to the 850 supplied & fitted.

I agree with the above post. Unless you want the freedom of instant hot water I'd stick with what you have. Alter the pipework & repair the shower

hooplah

Thanks for the feedback folks.

Yeah the problem with upstairs is that we can't regulate it.

I guess that means that our current pipework isn't up to scratch. The cold water tank in the attic isn't far away from the shower. Is that a problem?

FishOnABike

The difficulty to regulate / reduce the temperature may have been due to the different water pressure in the hot and cold supplies.

With a pump on the hot water supply and the cold water supply relying on a low head of water (the builder mentioned raising the water tank in the attic - this would increase the head / pressure in the cold water supply) it is likely there is a significant difference in the pressure of the hot and cold supplies.

If the height to raise the attic tank is limited you might be able to add a pump to the cold supply to provide similar pressure as the hot supply.

In my limited experience I've only seen thermostatic mixers where hot and cold supplies were both gravity fed or both with a pump (usually a single dual feed pump) which would give roughly equal supply pressures.

antoinolachtnai

When you say you can't regulate it, do you mean that you can't get a nice 'goldilocks' temperature, it is always too hot, or too cold? Or do you mean something else?

Is only the hot water to the shower pumped? If that is the case, well that's your problem.

It is always a good thing to have the attic tank as high as possible, and even a few feet can double top-floor pressure, but if there is a pump, it really shouldn't make much difference at all.

Sleeper12

Unless you have a combi boiler off the mains supply then you should have equal pressure in the hot & cold as both are fed from the cold supply in the attic.

It's possible the hot & cold are back to front on the mixer. This could cause your problem. Hot off the mains & cold off the tank will also cause this problem. It could be a faulty thermostatic cartridge. Builder seems to be making excuses. If he plumbed it correctly they both hot & cold will have equal pressure with or without lifting the attic tank. To be honest cold water tank height shouldn't be a factor because you havethe pump to boost the pressure.

hooplah

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

When you say you can't regulate it, do you mean that you can't get a nice 'goldilocks' temperature, it is always too hot, or too cold? Or do you mean something else?

Is only the hot water to the shower pumped? If that is the case, well that's your problem.

I mean that if you had the temperature set to say 30 degrees that you wouldn't be able to reduce it / turn the knob until you started running out of hot water. If you had gas heating the hot water for a while then you might not get anything out of the shower at all unless you turn the knob in the shower up to a higher temperature.

hooplah

Thanks for all the advice folks, much appreciated.