Old gavanised hot water immersion tank.

[aussiekylie]

Hi all,

I need a little advice please.
I've just bought a 1930s semi and it has a very old galvanised immersion tank in a cupboard of one of the bedrooms. I suspect that this used to act as a back-up for the back-boiler in one of the fireplaces (not sure if this still works as we've not used the fireplace yet, though the pipes still appear to be intact). There's no timer or anything on the immersion, we just turn it on when we want some hot water.

There's a cold-water tank up in the loft that feeds the hot water tank on the first floor and all the other cold taps (other than the kitchen sink).

Next year we'll be doing an extension when we'll get gas into the property and install either a combi or a megaflow. In the meantime however we'd like to get rid of both the tanks, or at least relocate them to the ground floor while we fix up the loft and first floor. This is just a temporary solution until we do the extension.

I intend to change all the cold water to run off the mains, but know I can't run the hot water tank from the mains, as per this thread:
//www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=9210#9210

My question is, if I move the hot water tank to the ground floor, and put in a smaller cold water tank above (sufficient to hold a baths worth of water) will there be enough pressure for hot water to make it to the first floor where the bath is? If not, would putting in a small pump work?

Any other suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

 

[MeldrewsMate]

Clearly the cold water storage tank (CWS) needs to be a) higher than the hot water cylinder and, b) a minimum of about 1m higher than the highest outlet (tap or shower head). So your CWS tank needs to be high on the first floor or, preferrably, in the loft.

An alternative is to put the CWS high on the ground floor, feeding the HW cylinder below it, and use a twin negative head pump in your temporary set-up to feed the first floor. These pumps don't come cheap, but then I don't know your budget. They also can be a little annoying if they run for 10 seconds every couple of hours to "top-up" the downstram pressure....in the middle of the night.

Another concern is for the integrity of this "galvanised" HW cylinder after it has been re-sited. Wouldn't you be better off buying an old cylinder off Ebay and using that before removing the old cylinder. In this way you'll have less worry about damaging the old one during the re-siting, and a reasonable supply of hot water in the process. In my experience customers don't appreciate their hot water being off for more than 24 hours!

In conclusion it's tank stays in the loft/1st floor, or you buy a negative head pump.

Hope this helps.
MM

 

[aussiekylie]

Brilliant idea to buy an old cylinder from ebay ... I'd not thought of that. We're talking about an unvented mains cylinder, right?

I don't mind spending some money for a temporary solution .. hence the pump idea. I just want to be able to crack on refurbing the loft, bathroom and bedroom that currently have pipework for the existing system.