How to turn off water on tank system?

[sammy1990]

Hello. This may sound a very silly question, but I need to turn of the water. I want to change my bath and basin taps, but I have a tank system, with a hot water cylinder in an airing cupboard. There is no stop valves on the pipes near the taps. How do I turn the hot water off?

I have changed taps before at my mums but that was on a combination boiler so I just turned of the at the stop tap under sink. But this tank set up has left me puzzled, I dont want to fiddle about with the valves near the cylinder unless I know what does what.

 

[footprints]

There should be a pipe from the bottom of the main loft tank going directly to the bottom of the cylinder.

There should be a valve (usually a wheel head "gate valve" type but not always ) on that supply, when turned off the hot taps will run for a while until the water drains to the top of the cylinder then it will stop.

The cold taps may also come off this pipe or may have a second cold feed from the bottom of the tank.

When turning back on open fully and then close a tiny bit (about 1/8 turn) to stop it jambing in the open position.

If you have no valve you will need to shut off the supply to the main tank and drain the whole thing, but try to avoid that as air locks are more likely and all kinds of muck can be drawn down from the tank.

 

[JohnD]

if your cold bathtap is also fed from the cold storage tank (practice varies by region), and you need to drain it, turn off the supply to the cold tank (if necessary using your main stopcock) and use the cold bathtap to drain the tank. If any grit or dirt comes down, it has a better chance of passing harmlessly through the large bathtap than if you let it go into the cylinder.

Once the cold tank is empty, water will stop coming out of the hot tap.

If the cold tank is very dirty, mop it clean using a sponge and bucket before refilling. You can wipe it round with bleach if you want. Fit a lid if it did not already have one.