Plumbing - heating

Ccd1905

Hi, looking for advice on home heating/water system. We have a traditional gas boiler heating system. The pipes, cylinder (both copper) etc are prob as old as house which is 30/40 years old. Our showers aren’t electric just normal with low water pressure. Our cylinder is starting to leak and needs to replaced. What is the best and cost efficient way to replace and improve water pressure. We were given options of just replacing it with a new copper cylinder with a pump or go for a steel pressurised cylinder fitted to mains water and with a pump if its required. Costs are adding up and if they are going to be very expensive then i just want to make sure i am doing it right. Thanks

Sleeper12

If you don't need a new boiler then I wouldn't change it. Replace the old copper cylinder with a new insulated copper or stainless steel cylinder and add a pump. This gives you new cylinder & better pressure

whizbang

How high is your attic..?

Dont be arsed with a noisy unreliable pump, Just raise your tank as high as possible. (The new one of course;).)

K.Flyer

whizbang wrote: »

How high is your attic..?

Dont be arsed with a noisy unreliable pump, Just raise your tank as high as possible. (The new one of course;).)

And exactly how much of a difference will that make as compared to the pressure given by installing a 2 bar pump, if for example, the apex of the attic roof is 8 ft above the current position of the tank.
Hint: not very much!

whizbang

IF the upstairs shower head is 2 feet below the base of the tank, you could triple the pressure !!

3/4 piping with low pressure fittings would give a decent flow, considering the Op hasn't been pumped before..

K.Flyer

whizbang wrote: »

IF the upstairs shower head is 2 feet below the base of the tank, you could triple the pressure !!

3/4 piping with low pressure fittings would give a decent flow, considering the Op hasn't been pumped before..

Still wouldn't come anywhere near the pressure a 2 bar pump will give.
Every metre drop from the water tank equates to approx 0.1bar, therefore 10 feet ( +/- 3 meters) equals to 0.3 bar, a poor result for all the effort for almost 7 times less pressure than the pump.

Wearb

A 4 ft head of water would give a little over 1/10th of a bar of pressure.

Edit: KF expanded his explanation while I was posting, so mine is a bit repetitive.

whizbang

Just throwing my 2 cents out there; I just dont get the fascination with pumped.

Wont be long before water charges come back, then you'll be running around fitting restrictors..
Mains Electricity requirement, so backup needed. Almost the first coment given for posters asking about showers.
Then theres the noise..
Reliability..

Wearb

whizbang wrote: »

Just throwing my 2 cents out there; I just dont get the fascination with pumped.

Wont be long before water charges come back, then you'll be running around fitting restrictors..
Mains Electricity requirement, so backup needed. Almost the first coment given for posters asking about showers.
Then theres the noise..
Reliability..

I agree. I don't need to be half washed out the plug hole either, but I know I'm in a small minority.

K.Flyer

whizbang wrote: »

Just throwing my 2 cents out there; I just dont get the fascination with pumped.

Wont be long before water charges come back, then you'll be running around fitting restrictors..
Mains Electricity requirement, so backup needed. Almost the first coment given for posters asking about showers.
Then theres the noise..
Reliability..

There is also a good argument for pumped..
With a lot of water you will get your whole body wetter quicker, then turn off the water and get scrubbing, turn on the water and with good pressure you are rinsed off in no time and by comparison very little water used. I say that with experience having just moved from a 2 bar shower to a house with something not much better than gravity and yes I will fit a big pump water charges or not .
If the power goes I'll have other things to worry about, mainly getting dinner ready.
As for reliability, I am still attending to pumps needing their first repair after 12 years service, not bad going.
And a decent brass bodied pump, correctly installed is usually very very quiet. Plastic pumps are usually terribly noisy.
But horses for courses and each to their own, but for me, after a hard day, nothing beats a high pressure shower system washing the day away, rather than having to walk around the cubicle trying to get wet.

John.G

It's all in the mind, perception is all, even some top class hotels abroad now have replaced their 15/20 LPM showers with eco showers at 5/6 LPM not much more than a 9kw electric showers which IMO give a very pleasant shower as the jets of water are well designed.
As showers are really the main "need" for pumping one would think that there would be more of the Triton AS2000XT/Noval SR type about which give power shower performance.

Sleeper12

John.G wrote: »

It's all in the mind, perception is all, even some top class hotels abroad now have replaced their 15/20 LPM showers with eco showers at 5/6 LPM not much more than a 9kw electric showers which IMO give a very pleasant shower as the jets of water are well designed.
As showers are really the main "need" for pumping one would think that there would be more of the Triton AS2000XT/Noval SR type about which give power shower performance.

When we were kids there was 1/4 or 1/8 of a bar above us in the shower. If the heating wasn't on & it usually wasn't, in the room then there wasn't enough hot water to keep you warm. You had to practically run around the shower to get wet.I remember shivering in a hot shower!!! 5/ LPM would have been like a power shower to us back then

John.G

I have a "emergency" hose+head that you just shove onto the bath taps and I think when I tested it, it gave 3.5 LPM but better than nothing, will try it again later, it might become the new eco shower.