Bath cold feed

[david_uk]

Bit of a no-brainer this one, but I'd like to know if I'm right or wrong:-

New bath being fitted soon. It's a shower bath that is quite big, and will take more water to fill than a standard bath. At the moment, the cold feed into the bathroom is from the storage tank in the roof and runs to a pumped shower and the sink. The shower unit is staying, so will still need the stored cold feed to that.

As the bath will probably take a while to fill, I was thinking I should run the cold feed from the mains water, not the stored. There is a convenient supply going to the toilet.

When the existing boiler breathes it's last we will be replacing it with an up to date system and lose the stored hot and cold, so having a cold feed from the mains under the bath will be required for whatever shower solution we need in the future.

Does this make sense? Or would anybody use stored cold for the bath fill?

Thanks

 

[Bahco]

Good idea to have a mains fed bath but it sounds like you enjoy a cold bath.

 

[Richard C]

Bath feeds are usually 22mm & the problem with taking off from the w/c supply is it’s likely to be just 15mm; it depends on your water pressure but it could mean the bath may take an age to fill. I’ve just replaced & updated my ageing water system with new tanks & a whole house pump & although I kept the sink cold feeds on mains (means you can also drink the water), I kept the bath on the 22mm pumped (stored water) circuit; it certainly fills the bath very quickly!

I would also give it some thought before doing away with stored water supply for the power shower/bath. I have a conventional system & I’m no expert on combi boilers but I’ve had some disappointing feedback from friends who rely on them for their power showers/bath. I believe you can feed a pressurised storage system from a combi boiler & presumably this overcomes problems of insufficient HW when someone else turns on a tap but it will also depend on the size of the system.

 

[david_uk]

Hmm.... So it's not entirely cut and dried then!

The bath downstairs is fed from the mains and a 15mm pipe. There is a reduction coupling somewhere along the line from an old steel pipe. That fills OK, so I think a 15mm cold feed from the mains would probably work OK upstairs where this is going to be fitted. However, if it works OK from stored water, then that will make plumbing easier in a way, but the stored feed is also at 15mm!

I think I'm inclined to give it a go with stored cold and see what it works like. If I need a cold mains feed then it will be fairly easy to change later on.

But it's a good point re cold stored and a shower with a combi. My brother had his cold storage tanke removed because there was no option with the loft extension. Whereas we don't need to remove the tank. In fact it would be difficult to do that without cutting it up!