Hello.
I wonder if anyone has a view on this problem of mine, which has been steadily getting worse: We have a waterjacketed woodburner that heats a 1,000L thermal store tank. We get mains hot water through a copper coil inserted in the thermal store, which heats the water. Over the last few weeks the mains hot water has been initially strong with good flow, but after a few seconds it reduces to about 15% of the original flow. This has been slowly getting worse. When it was flowing better than it is now, I saw the flow surging. Now there is no detectable surging and just the slow flow. I suspect there is a blockage close to the tank because all hot water taps are affected. The only other thing along the pipe is a thermostatic valve to keep the hot water at a constant temperature. I tried closing and reopening the valve but there was no effect on flow, and a very small difference in temperature between the valve being fully closed or fully open. We have a water pressure control valve at the stopcock which limits the pressure to 5 bar (from 10 bar) and there is very little difference between the fluctuation of the needle on the gauge when the hot tap or cold tap is opened. Could it be the thermostatic valve, or furring in the heater coil? Or something else? I forgot to mention that we have a Scale Eliminator 54 from the East Midlands Water Company that works as a kind of passive water softener, and is plumbed at the mains entry, so in theory there should be less furring in the pipes, although scale will still deposit in the kettle, but not as bad as it would do normally. We had all this system installed in 2009. Thanks for any suggestions!
I wonder if anyone has a view on this problem of mine, which has been steadily getting worse: We have a waterjacketed woodburner that heats a 1,000L thermal store tank. We get mains hot water through a copper coil inserted in the thermal store, which heats the water. Over the last few weeks the mains hot water has been initially strong with good flow, but after a few seconds it reduces to about 15% of the original flow. This has been slowly getting worse. When it was flowing better than it is now, I saw the flow surging. Now there is no detectable surging and just the slow flow. I suspect there is a blockage close to the tank because all hot water taps are affected. The only other thing along the pipe is a thermostatic valve to keep the hot water at a constant temperature. I tried closing and reopening the valve but there was no effect on flow, and a very small difference in temperature between the valve being fully closed or fully open. We have a water pressure control valve at the stopcock which limits the pressure to 5 bar (from 10 bar) and there is very little difference between the fluctuation of the needle on the gauge when the hot tap or cold tap is opened. Could it be the thermostatic valve, or furring in the heater coil? Or something else? I forgot to mention that we have a Scale Eliminator 54 from the East Midlands Water Company that works as a kind of passive water softener, and is plumbed at the mains entry, so in theory there should be less furring in the pipes, although scale will still deposit in the kettle, but not as bad as it would do normally. We had all this system installed in 2009. Thanks for any suggestions!
