overboard shower

[dubdad]

Hi all , tell me if ya think im mad..

going to revovate my bathroom and was planning on using an electric shower meant for mains feed (mira escape,9.0kW, nice chrome job), but as my mains water pressure is not good, was considering giving it a feed from the tank in 22mm pipe via a stuart turner 3bar negative head pump then reducing down to 15mm for the final connection.

Perhaps a pumped electric would be easier but the choices are few and they can look a bit cheap, and i was hoping to get a nice overall finish.

am i letting something simple get out of hand?

i have 4 kids (2 of them teenagers, so need something instantaneous, as the cylinder is not enough,~)
btw its an old house with open gravity hot water system,a newer gas fired heating system(closed), with a coil in the cylinder, and an old immersion with only the sink element working, anyway not that stuff really matters, but the mains cold has pretty low pressure(Dublin), so i want to feed this shower from the tank, but emulating a well pressurised mains feed, as the pump should maintain pressure between itself and the outlet(just the shower)

all comments welcome , d

 

[TicklyT]

It does sound OTT. Any increase in flow above the requirements of an electric shower just results in a cold shower. The limit is how fast the heater can heat the water flowing through it. There is no way an electric shower can match the flow rates through a shower mixer.

A flow of about 5 or 6 litres per minute is usually about as much as an electric shower can handle, and that is well within the limits the water company is obliged to supply.

 

[Jake1886]

You could fit a electric power shower. It will require a hot and cold feed.

You will have to either fit a essex flange or a surrey flange on the hot water cylinder and run a supply from that, a surrey flange is recommended. And the shower will need a independent cold feed from your cistern in the loft.

You can get power showers finished in chrome as well.

 

[dubdad]

thanks for your thoughts lads, i am a very inexperienced diy plumber, though i thought that the st pump would deliver about 9l/min?
also the tech specs for the shower indicate a pressure range of 0.7 to 10bar, so i thought the 3bar pump would be ok.
i was talking to a tech support guy from stuart turner about a 2bar pump and he thought a 3bar might be more in line with what the shower manufacturers might reccomend.
The 3 bar negative head reccomendation originally came from some tech guy at 'aqualisa' when i mailed them with a query about doing the same thing with their own mains fed electric shower!

I thought (assumed would b better, and we all know the trouble that this can get us into) that the diffrent power settings on the shower i,ii,iii would give diffrent flow rates while the heating elements hummed merrily away at a set rate?

I think i will go out and buy one of those gadgets for checking water pressure.

this is all for a big bathroom project, basically everything is getting ripped out and new suite with concealed cistern btw wc, lots of chrome ,porcelain tiles, etc.
only the taps and shower left to get, but found the limited choice here frustrating(low pressure taps are becoming the exception, not the rule)

pumped mixer not an option, teenage daughter=hotwater hog

water quite hard also anyone any experience of the in-line magnetic scale inhibitors? look a bit gimmicky, do they really work?

perhaps i will just bang up a mira elite st, as i put a new storage tank a couple of months ago and put in a 15mm tank connectorand gate valve, blanked off for upcoming bathroom renovation, and was a bit disgusted to see the pump would need 22mm throughout, till just before the shower!

anyway i obviously have too much time on my hands, the sooner i get started the better

 

[Jake1886]

I'd go for a Liff limefighter for limescale control. Got one fitted indoors, no limescale problems here.

Bristan make a shower pump with 15mm connections, there are more than likely to be other shower manufactures that make shower pumps with 15mm connections also. Some aren't supplied with isolation valves, if thats the case then fit 'full bore' isolation valves as well.

Shower pumps can be very loud especially the cheap ones! Fitted a cheap one earlier in the year and there were complaints, client wanted cheap as possible. Generally the more money you spend on a pump the quieter they are.

Is your cold water cistern located below the outlet of the proposed shower location? Then if thats the case you would require a negative pressure shower pump, if its the other way round, your cistern is located above the proposed shower outlet you would require a positive pressure pump.