Installing a pump for a shower - long run for pipes / spring water fed.

[mattdiylove it]

Hoping to put a shower in our house and would appreciate some advice Our current system has a hot water tank in airing cupboard cold water feed in same airing cupboard so at about 6-7ft to top of tank. We are on a spring fed from a tank that is way up the hill 40m elevation so delivers a decent head and feeds our cold water tank.

So the shower is to be positioned abut 10m away from tanks on the same floor.

I have a few choices i think
1. Install a pump and get a thermostatic shower which is my preferred option as makes use of hot water we get from our rayburn. Issues are i would have preferred a pump next to shower but it seems it needs to be next to hot water tank. Also implication is 10m is too far? and will it give me the pressure i need for a shower which i wouldn't get from the existing header tank. I'm assuming a positive head pump would be fine. The current height of tank would just deliver a dribble- we have a bath shower mixer and lifting the hose demonstrates this.

2. Electric shower. Use the gravity head system - Is the internal pump in this enough to give the pressure the boost we'd need due to the relative low height of the cold tank. Limited as less choice of showers it seems for gravity fed.

3. Electric shower but connect straight to spring feed which gives the advantage of a higher pressure. I suppose this could vary but unlikely as we're talking 40m of height between house and the spring tank. The fact is that we have a cold water tank for a reason i guess.

Any help experiences or advice appreciated.
Matt

 

[Madrab]

Interesting problem. 10m is really to far for a standard domestic pump, max they advise is around the 5m Mark.

If you get the min flow at the shower head on hot and cold then the power shower (2) isn't a bad idea, they do deliver a reasonably powerful shower.

I'd be more prone to do some investigation into how stable the 4odd bar you are getting from your supply is though. If the dynamic pressure is consistently higher than 3 bar then you could look at mains (spring) hot and cold. Do you have a limit as to the max draw on the spring that you are allowed to have?

 

[mattdiylove it]

Thanks for your help. I hadn't realised a 'power shower' needed such a small head so that was winning. I then thought about drainage which is a similar distance to soil pipe and hence a lot of horizontal pipe. So I think this disaster might be averted by moving the ensuite back to other end of house, next to hot and cold tanks and so use pump and just get a macerator to pump in small pipe under boards straight to soil pipe. cheers!