Heating question

Hi all

The electric shower upstairs is ready installed. Its on the same level as the hot water cylinder too so would need pumps if we switched it to gas. In future, the cylinder is probably going downstairs.

Im put off the idea of a combi. So pressurised cylinder probably best bet. Will do some checks on incoming water pressure.

Pity i need to ditch the mexico as it has been 100% reliable even through that really cold spell a couple of years ago. My parents modern condensing boiler froze solid whereas i didnt give the mexico a second thought. Indeed, even the path near the exhaust flue had been almost cleared of snow haha.

thanks for all the help.
 
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Hi all

The electric shower upstairs is ready installed. Its on the same level as the hot water cylinder too so would need pumps if we switched it to gas. In future, the cylinder is probably going downstairs.

The position of the hot water cylinder is irreverent. The pressure is provided by the cold tank which hopefully is in the loft. Pressure can be usefully increased by raising the cold tank on a platform.
 
I can never understand why anyone with a gas boiler would have an electric shower considering electricity costs four times (yes, 4 times) the cost of gas.

If the low flow rate from an instantaneous electric shower is approximately one quarter of that from a decent combi, pumped power shower, or unvented cylinder, which to me they appear to be, then running cost will be the same.

Unless because of it's poor performance you stay under it four times as long. :)
 
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Being a bit of a fuddy duddy a couple of points; are your showers OK at the moment? If so why not stick with gravity as it has less chance of going wrong than with an unvented cylinder (if gravity fails you'll have bigger worries than showering). You'll be running pipework one way to the new cylinder position, no reason you can't use a gravity vented arrangement and run it the other way, just different pipes, different directions.

If you go unvented performance is determined by incoming flow and pressure so make sure that is adequate first.

Unvented is also accompanied by a filter, pressure reducing valve, pressure relief valve, temperature and pressure relief valve, an expansion space, an additional motorised valve and an annual service in addition to your boiler. Gravity tank fed systems require a decent bylaws insulation set and a ballvalve.

I can't think of a combi off the top of my head that can't be used as a boiler first then to supply heating, a hot tap and a DHW cylinder later so you're not restricted to one brand. Combi's also have the advantage of being cheaper than heat only boilers due to economies of scale in manufacture.

Electric showers are good if you rely on a combi only with no cylinder immersion backup as you have a way of keeping clean as with a combi supplying everything if there's a problem you're out hot water and heating together; heating is OK with temporary room heaters but no hot water is more of a problem. If you go combi keep the electric shower.

Just stuff thrown into the mix but I'm smiling to myself as I write this as I know people will do whatever they want in spite of advice just as often as because of advice.
 
Being a bit of a fuddy duddy a couple of points; are your showers OK at the moment? If so why not stick with gravity as it has less chance of going wrong than with an unvented cylinder (if gravity fails you'll have bigger worries than showering). You'll be running pipework one way to the new cylinder position, no reason you can't use a gravity vented arrangement and run it the other way, just different pipes, different directions.

If you go unvented performance is determined by incoming flow and pressure so make sure that is adequate first.

Unvented is also accompanied by a filter, pressure reducing valve, pressure relief valve, temperature and pressure relief valve, an expansion space, an additional motorised valve and an annual service in addition to your boiler. Gravity tank fed systems require a decent bylaws insulation set and a ballvalve.

I can't think of a combi off the top of my head that can't be used as a boiler first then to supply heating, a hot tap and a DHW cylinder later so you're not restricted to one brand. Combi's also have the advantage of being cheaper than heat only boilers due to economies of scale in manufacture.

Electric showers are good if you rely on a combi only with no cylinder immersion backup as you have a way of keeping clean as with a combi supplying everything if there's a problem you're out hot water and heating together; heating is OK with temporary room heaters but no hot water is more of a problem. If you go combi keep the electric shower.

Just stuff thrown into the mix but I'm smiling to myself as I write this as I know people will do whatever they want in spite of advice just as often as because of advice.

Hi, thanks, appreciate the insights. I've thought about this a lot and keep going around and around, partly because i agree with most of what you say.

I wish i could get someone reliable to come out.

We are in a bungalow. We have an upstairs bathroom and a downstairs bathroom. The downstairs one has the bath and a shower, and is the main bathroom. Before we spent 10k renovating our downstairs bathroom, all carried out by pro / reputable etc, the shower was decent and the bath used to fill quickly. Once we get the nice new shiny fittings, the flow is awful and the bath takes forever to fill. Obviously got them back out and they said the fittings were the right type 0.5 bar IIRC but if we wanted, they would swap all the fittings etc but no guarantees, flow not enough mate - even though it worked fine before? No idea mate, can't have. Grr. In hindsight i'm not quite sure why but i left them off the hook, and fast forward 3 years its doing my head in. The shower keeps slowing to a dribble, and the hot water circuit has to be back-flowed with mains water (thumb over the faucet, hot and cold on at same time) because air keeps getting in. Its ok for a few days then back to a trickle. We've stopped using it, so are now using the 8kw shower upstairs which has a better pressure.

Shower fitting is one of those combined overhead and handle showers. The bath is two taps and an attached hand held head.

Anyway, we want to put a new kitchen in, and i have to get the washing machine and tumble dryer into their own room because the noise drives me mad, so we are building a utility room. The utility room door is exactly where the boiler currently resides (bless that little heap of iron, just turned on the heating for the first time this year - no drama no fuss, just hot rads - thank you 1994 ideal mexico 100000BTU). The boiler btw has its own room, which is where the gas, electric, water, and fiber line all comes in. The gas, water and boiler are exactly where we'll knock thru. So in doing so, we need to get a new boiler, which means we may as well solve all the plumbing hassles including the dead leg kitchen hot tap, which will be replaced with an instant hot water heater.

In the new utility room there will be ample room for a pressured cylinder and boiler. And in installing those, we can remove the DHW tank, hot cylinder, and CH F&E from the room upstairs to make a new bathroom for the kids.

Being in a bungalow means we can't push the DHW tank higher if we wanted to. I did buy a shower pump, but its still in the box.

Sorry for the long post. TLDR - i'd like a pressure cylinder because it should solve some shower problems, frees up space for an extra bathroom, and seems like it would work better than a combi. If i could keep the ideal mexico i would do so.

I'll look up how to check my flow rate of the incoming main and report back. Seems pretty decent, but who knows eh.

If you read this ranty long winded ramble, thank you.
 
If your old bathroom outlets were plumbed in copper, and the new ones are fitted on flexi hoses, that is likely to be the problem, the bore on some of these hoses is very restricting
 

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