Please help a beginner ! ! ! !

[saclarke1977]

First off I am a complete beginner. But since moving to a house that needs a ton of work budget is stretch so have had to do most of the work myself.

Anyway, the old bath suite was awful so we purchased a new one. The pipework all needed to be moved as the bath, basin and toilet positions have changed.

Problem has occured with the bath and new shower. I have put all the pipework in and there were no leaks but the pressure on the hot tap is now greatly reduced compared to what it was before I started playing around.

The cold pipes are 15mm pipes, but the hot was 22mm. I put on this converter bit (see, i know all the technical terms) to change it to 15mm. Basically 22mm pipe going in and 2 15mm pipes going out - one to the bath and one to the shower. Could that be the problem?

Because of the low pressure on the hot tap, the shower mixer thing doesn't work cos the cold water outweighs the hot so to speak. The pressure on the hot tap downstairs in the kitchen is fine.

Any ideas? Any help is greatly appreciated - especially since I am a complete beginner just trying to get the house ready so the family can move in.

Look forward to the replies - even the sarcastic reply from Kevplumb

 

[kevplumb]

take the "converter thing" reducer out

 

[saclarke1977]

OK - will do that. You know when you start something and then wish you hadn't bothered??? How i feel

Anyway, will redo it and see how it goes. Thanks Kev

 

[kevplumb]

aye and we have all been there marra

thats why the boys and girls post on here

 

[Danny-The-Pipe]

There is a good chance you have air locked the pipe, easily done, and most of the time, easily remedied. Without seeing it, I couldn't say for sure, but thats what I'd put my money on.

 

[ChrisR]

No no no no no no no no no yes.

But where do your supplies come from?
If you have mains cold and tank fed hot, ye'rrrr doooomed.

A bit of 15mm will make no difference to the shower - all the water goes up a skinny hose anyway.

 

[saclarke1977]

Where does the supply come from?? This could be tricky but i will try to explain.

In the kitchen is a boiler. I have noticed that if you run the hot tap, after a short delay the boiler fires up. Upstairs in the airing cupboard is a big arse tank thing. In the loft is two tanks - one big and one smaller.

My crazy notion is that when you use any of the hot water, the boiler fires up to heat water and send it into the tank in the airing cupboard where it gets stored until needed. As for the two tanks in the loft, buggered if I know what the hell they are for.

You'll have to excuse me if I come accross thicker then the ofspring of a TV weather girl and the village idiot

cheers

 

[TicklyT]

Hot water cylinder and two cisterns in loft....Sounds like a gravity hot water system.....Not much pressure there, so usually piped in 22mm to improve the flow.
15mm pipework on cold supply.... sounds like it could be a mains pressure cold feed...

Are you confusing pressure and flow? A low pressure will give the same flow through a large pipe as a high pressure will through a small pipe.

Quick (and messy ) test for both hot and cold feed pressures... Put your thumb over the outlet and turn the tap on. If you can stop the flow, it's probably a gravity feed. If you get very wet very quickly, it's probably at mains pressure.
You will probably feel if there's much difference in the static pressures of the feeds anyway.

Are your new bath taps/filler suitable for use on your system? If it is fed via a cistern in the loft, it is probably at about 0.2 Bar pressure, give or take.
Some quote a minimum working pressure of about 0.5 Bar, and even then will only fill a bath in about a fortnight

Is the shower mixer suitable for gravity hot and mains cold feeds, or does it require both supplies at the same pressure?
A solution for the shower, providing the mixer is suitable for use on a gravity system, may be to run an additional cold feed from the cistern in the loft to the mixer to give balanced water pressures.

 

[saclarke1977]

Well that was fun - got the missus to do the test and it was like a wet T-Shirt contest - so thanks for that

That was on the cold tap - the hot tap we could stop with our thumbs.

The manual for the shower is:

http://www.screwfix.com/sfd/i/cat/pdfs/98/p4205198.pdf

It says that it needs a minimum of 0.5bar. Is there a way of testing to see what bar we have? I am guessing that i'm gonna need to get a pump aswell.

The hot water gets heated from the boiler downstairs and stored in the tank in tha airing cupboard. If the tank is switched off I still get hot water - if it's on I get even hotter water. It doesn't seem to fit into any models I have seen of plumbing systems.

Since I am a dumbarse at this - will I be able to fix it or should I just bite the bullet, tell the kids they can't eat for a week and get a professional in?