Can you save my bodge?

[Slim69]

So a while ago I re-plumbed my bathroom. We have an old boiler downstairs, water tank upstairs with a header tank in the loft.

Against all good advice I teed the bath supply from the shower supply. It was takign ages for the hot water to come through on the shower, so we needed the cold tap running in the bath to reduce the cold pressure enough to get the hot through.

I realised that the cold water feed was straight from the mains, so I changed this and now it's coming straight from the tank in the loft, so should be under the same pressure (or thereabouts) as the hot water, but we still have the same problem.

I know that none of this is ideal, but i'm skint and just trying to get things working OK. Any ideas? I've heard about pressure-reducing valves and thought about putting one of those in the cold water feed.

Any help gratefully received.

 

[footprints]

I doubt your problem is pressure, more likely the head of water is poor and there is a long run from the hot tank to the shower. Running a bath the water pours in at perhaps 3 gal or more a minute where as the shower is only passing perhaps 1 gal a minute. The work around is to turn on the bath hot tap till it runs hot then turn off and run your shower.

 

[Madrab]

Is the hot water tap running ok on bath and shower, it just takes a while to go hot or is there low hot water flow?

What size is all the pipework? Ideally it should be 22mm to the bathroom, feed the bath 1st with the 22mm and then T off 15mm to the shower with a gravity system.

How high is the cold cistern in the loft above the shower head?

 

[Slim69]

The run is about 30 ft, and the head is probably only about 4 ft.

I wonder whether it's worthwhile raising the header tank.

 

[Slim69]

Hi madrab. Our posts crossed. I'm sitting here at 'work' and I'm not sure what size pipe I used. I think I used 22mm going down to 15 mm for the shower, but I t'd the feed off to the bath taps, rather than t'd the shower feed off the bath pipe.

 

[footprints]

To be honest at 4ft it is barely on the cusp of working as a shower, at 66 my waterworks are not what they were, but I can probably pee faster!
Maybe raise the tank or look at a shower pump or electric shower.

PS if you shop around there are shower heads designed to work on low heads that might help.

 

[Jackrae]

You say it takes ages for the hot to come through - do you get a good flow until that happens or is it just a slow flow, irrespective of whether the hot has arrived or not. If your valve is a thermostatic one there should be virtually no cold water flowing until the hot has arrived, after which you should see a flow increase as the waters start to blend. There is also the possibility that the shower inlet port filters are blocked with debris, but only 4 feet of head with 30 feet of run is asking a bit much.