Should I move cold water tank to loft????

grahamw01 · 10 May 2006

Hi, I've been reading some of the forums and I'm not sure as to whether moving my cold water tank into the loft would give me a better shower. I have a straightforward mixer shower, the bath taps have the hose coming from the top. The pipes to the bath are those flexi types.

The hot water tank and cold water tank are in the airing cuboard. The shower head is at the same level as the base of the cold water tank. If I just have the hot tap on, then the pressure is useles, by turning the cold a minut amount the water goes cold. I basically have to keep the shower head on the bath floor to get a decent temparture out.

What can I do

Agile · 10 May 2006

If you have a hot water cylinder then fitting a new water regs complient and insulated cistern in the loft would greatly improve your shower.

Alternately fitting a shower pump might be a little cheaper but more noisy and will fail sometimes.

If you fit a new cistern then if you can lift it as high as possible that that will be better. Also using a "vertical" format cistern will give a higher full water level than an horizontal one.

Tony

grahamw01 · 10 May 2006

My cold is mains fed, can I still fit a pump?

Some other comments I've read say they still get cr@p pressure even when the cold water tank is in the loft

numpty with a crowbar · 10 May 2006

grahamw01 said:
My cold is mains fed, can I still fit a pump?

Some other comments I've read say they still get c**p pressure even when the cold water tank is in the loft

Agreed - I spent a weekend (punctuated by large volumes of Saturday night beverages) raising my tank into the loft and it made a small amount of differecne, but not really enough. I'm now about to fit a pump to try that. So might be worth raising it to address noise issues - but unless you're going to raise it by at least 10-15ft it's not going to make much difference

grahamw01 · 10 May 2006

It will only get raised about 7 foot. What about the issue of having my cold mains fed, can I stick a pump on it? Do pumps exist only for the hot water pipe?

It would be ideal if I could stick a pump on the hot just before it reaches the bath tap

Agile · 10 May 2006

You do not need to pump your cold water and its illegal to do so anyway.

You can pump just the hot and ideally you should measure the cold and choose a pump with about the same pressure output as your cold mains pressure.

Raising the cold cistern into the loft and ideally with the base 1 m above the loft floor will give a good shower if the head is suitable for a gravity flow system. If you do that though you should use 28 mm feed from the cistern to the HW cylinder and also fit a seperate 22 mm feed from the cistern to the bath cold so you have balanced pressures.

Its not good practice to have cistern fed hot and mains cold. That arrangement in any case should have non return valves fitted but rarely does.

Tony Glazier

grahamw01 · 10 May 2006

Ok I understand that. If I have a seperate pipe from the cistern to the cold bath tap, then do I still need the pump on the hot to bring the pressure up to the cold? Won't having the new pipe directly to the cold tap mean that both the hot and cold are of equal pressure?

Thanks
graham

Agile · 11 May 2006

I think you have missed the point.

You need more pressure, either a pump or raise the cistern to the loft plus a bit.

Read above again and hopefully you will understand it.

Tony

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Should I move cold water tank to loft????

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