Electric Shower Installation

HOUSER1980 · 7 Feb 2019

Morning All,

I currently have a Showerforce 1500XT thermostatic shower installed which is great. Problem is I have to warm the water up in the tank before I can use it unless I want a cold shower.

I'm thinking of getting and electric shower installed. Could I use the wiring already in place for the 1500XT or would I need it all redoing?

Thanks

yorkspark · 7 Feb 2019

The shower force 1500xt runs off a fuse spur, a normal electric shower doesn’t.

You may have an old shower supply in the loft, if not a new supply will be needed from your consumer unit, also rcd/rcbo protection will be needed.

If you have an old style fuse board, some of these are not suitable for loads over 32a so extra work may be required at the mains end before connection.

It may be easier to fit a time switch on your water tank to allow hot water to be ready in time

Taylortwocities · 7 Feb 2019

The other item is that the instant heat showers require a mains water feed, ie not supplied from a cold water tank/gravity feed.
Your first thing to find out is if you have mains pressure cold water feed in your bathroom.
If you dont, and you still want to proceed down the instant heat shower route you will need
1. a plumber who can provide the necessary pipework and install the shower itself
2. a registered electrician to provide a high current, RCD protected electricity supply for the shower itself

or, you could look at installing a timer, of some sort, so that you have hot water in your tank!

ericmark · 7 Feb 2019

If you have used an electric trickle shower you would not want to fit electric instead of a proper shower. To get a good shower in winter you need around 20 kW of power, electric instant showers are between 8.5 and 12 kW and really for when no option to use either direct gas or stored water types.

The Willis External immersion heater may be your answer, invented by the Irish it heats water from the top of the tank down, so very soon after switch on you have hot water, you can have many thermostats, or timers to select how much you heat, so if you find you need a 5 minute shower then likely switching on 10 minutes before the shower you will get enough water. That would equate to a 15 kW shower.

JohnW2 · 7 Feb 2019

Taylortwocities said:
The other item is that the instant heat showers require a mains water feed, ie not supplied from a cold water tank/gravity feed.

Is that true of all (or even most) of them?

I would have thought that if the pressure from a ('gravity-fed') storage tank is adequate to service a (non-electric) thermostatic shower, it ought to also be adequate for an instant-heat electrical one. After all, one of the complaints about the latter is that they generally result in lower flow rates than a gravity-fed shower.

Kind Regards, John

Taylortwocities · 7 Feb 2019

I neither have the desire, or the time, to research in minute detail Every tiny nitty bitty part of what I post. If you want do this, then go ahead. I have no doubt that in an hour or so you’ll find a device that proves my post wrong.

In the meantime, I will amend to say:

In my experience, showers of this type require connecting to the incoming mains water supply. This extract from a Topaz 100 shower is , again in my experience,typical of most showers:

“To ensure activation of the heating elements, the shower must be connected to a mains water supply with a minimum running pressure of 100kPa (1.0 bar) at a minimum flow rate of nine litres per minute with a maximum static pressure of 1000kPa (10 bar).”

JohnW2 · 7 Feb 2019

Taylortwocities said:
I neither have the desire, or the time, to research in minute detail Every tiny nitty bitty part of what I post.

I'm not nit-picking - but, rather, am trying to learn - since, although I realise that many electric showers specify a minimum pressure of 1 bar (10 metres head of water, not achievable even in my house!), sometimes even higher, but, because of the reasoning I presented, I wondered why that is the case.

There are, of course, plenty of 'pumped electrically-heated showers' out there, designed to address this issue, but that's a different matter.

Kind Regards, John

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Electric Shower Installation

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