New supply pipe to house

[Jonnywh]

Hi everyone
I live in Newmarket in Suffolk, and I've recently bought a house that is in need of some renovation. Among the work we needed doing was replacing the boiler, and I decided on a vaillant ecomax 837 combi boiler, which I had a local plumber install.
The boiler works great, but has highlighted that the flow rate is poor when more than one tap is on. The pressure when only one tap is on is really quite good.

I understand that there will always be a drop in flow to some extent when running multiple taps, but I don't want a situation whereby we have to wait until the washing machine's finished before we can take a shower.

The pipe feeding the house almost certainly dates from when the house was built, in 1958, and I think is likely to be iron, or maybe copper. It's been suggested to me that the bore is probably pretty small due to corrosion/limescale (we have around 298 mg/l water hardness). Its a pretty long pipe as the driveway's around 25 metres.

Would replacing this with a new MDPE pipe be likely to help our water flow? The water mains down the road were replaced with plastic in the 1990s, and the pipe from the main to our water meter is apparently likely to be 15mm plastic (after talking to Anglian Water). If I was looking at replacing my metal pipe with 22mm plastic, should I be looking to ask the water company to replace their section with 22mm as well to see any benefit?

I'd really like to know everyone's views, and thanks for taking the time to read through my long winded post

 

[Jonnywh]

In addition, our water needs are as follows: we have a kitchen sink, a cold feed washing machine and a cold feed dishwasher downstairs, and upstairs in the bathroom we have a toilet, a sink, a bath and a thermostatic shower. So its not a huge household by any means, and the boiler has one of the best hot water flow outputs of any boiler (one of the main reasons I chose it, along with good reviews for the brand), which is why I think the rising main is the problem, not necessarily the decision to go with a combi boiler.

For what its worth we had three quotes, from British Gas, Northern Gas and a local plumber, and all three recommended getting a combi boiler.

 

[Agile]

My view is that you are wasting your time asking this when you have not measured and told us the flow rate.

Your plumber should have discussed all this with you before installing the boiler.

I note that YOU chose the boiler. If you are competent to specify a boiler then you would not need to ask these questions.

I thought they stopped making Ecomax boilers four years ago?

Tony

 

[Jonnywh]

Tony
Thank you for pointing out that I meant Ecotec and not Ecomax.

The plumber recommended this model after surveying the property, and I'd already done a fair bit of research and had been keen on the ecotec range. British Gas recommended Worcester and Northern Gas recommended Potterton, but I was happy going with the Vaillant option. Would you mind please leaving out the sarcasm, its not appreciated, and I am allowed to choose my own boiler if I so wish.

Yes the plumber should have measured the flow rate, but he didn't, and at the time I did not know that this was something that should be done. He measured the static pressure only, which was about 3 bar. It doesn't seem to reflect well on the plumber of course, but going over what he should have done won't help to resolve the flow issue I'm having now.

I have measured that I can get 12 litres in one minute from the kitchen tap, when it is the only tap turned on. I don't really know if there's anything else I need to do to take a proper flow reading.

Thanks for your reply