Power shower struggling to "start"and pump racing - certainly air in there somewhere me thinks - what do I do to fix !?
This is the history so far....
Plumbed the shower about 4 years ago. The shower always had a "quirk" whereby it would sometimes (maybe one in 20) struggle to start unless you swung it onto cold then both cold and hot would kick in. When this happened I also found that opening the secondary handset would work better than using the head shower presumably because handshower was a lot lower than the head shower (but cold water tank is about .8 metre above head shower so surprised by this) ? Nearly always more failures in the winter than in the summer - summer almost perfect. I understand air in the system and that more hot water would cause more of it - thus assuming this was the problem. Anyhow - I wasn't that bothered and was happy to leave it as-was.
However, I had to replace my leaking hot water tank about 6 months ago and ever since the problem has got much worse. While doing this I changed what was an essex to a surrey flange - and I also removed the anti-gravity loop (pump is in loft - and hot water is on floor below). I thought that surrey meant no need for anti-gravity ?
Looking at the other posts on this site I note something that I didn't when I put the pump in originally - an air valve *before* the pump. I have one on both hot and cold *after* the pump. Was I reading the instructions wrong and put them at the wrong side of the pump!? I think what I see is that one isn't needed with a wessex but one is needed with a surrey?. Does this have to be a manual valve? Surely the air is going to build up eventually so I'm just storing up the problem for later and I'll have to go in the loft on a regular basis to relieve it? (This is a problem for me as the house is now rented out - so would rather not make the tenants do this - not a good impression !) As the piping is in the loft and around the cold water tank - can I just put an open vent pipe hanging over the header tank like the expansion pipe is?
Any help desperately needed - I just had to replace the pump because the tenant just kept running it when it was racing and I don't fancy forking out for another one anytime soon !
many thanks,
John.
This is the history so far....
Plumbed the shower about 4 years ago. The shower always had a "quirk" whereby it would sometimes (maybe one in 20) struggle to start unless you swung it onto cold then both cold and hot would kick in. When this happened I also found that opening the secondary handset would work better than using the head shower presumably because handshower was a lot lower than the head shower (but cold water tank is about .8 metre above head shower so surprised by this) ? Nearly always more failures in the winter than in the summer - summer almost perfect. I understand air in the system and that more hot water would cause more of it - thus assuming this was the problem. Anyhow - I wasn't that bothered and was happy to leave it as-was.
However, I had to replace my leaking hot water tank about 6 months ago and ever since the problem has got much worse. While doing this I changed what was an essex to a surrey flange - and I also removed the anti-gravity loop (pump is in loft - and hot water is on floor below). I thought that surrey meant no need for anti-gravity ?
Looking at the other posts on this site I note something that I didn't when I put the pump in originally - an air valve *before* the pump. I have one on both hot and cold *after* the pump. Was I reading the instructions wrong and put them at the wrong side of the pump!? I think what I see is that one isn't needed with a wessex but one is needed with a surrey?. Does this have to be a manual valve? Surely the air is going to build up eventually so I'm just storing up the problem for later and I'll have to go in the loft on a regular basis to relieve it? (This is a problem for me as the house is now rented out - so would rather not make the tenants do this - not a good impression !) As the piping is in the loft and around the cold water tank - can I just put an open vent pipe hanging over the header tank like the expansion pipe is?
Any help desperately needed - I just had to replace the pump because the tenant just kept running it when it was racing and I don't fancy forking out for another one anytime soon !
many thanks,
John.
you`ll have to wait another 2 1/2 hours at least . :
