Poor mains pressure

[Dark Lord II]

Hi guys,

Firstly, my apologies for this long-winded post

Have been searching through the forum trying to find more information on an issue I'm having, but haven't been able to find a complete answer. Here is the background:

3 storey house with kitchen on ground (washing machine / tap), bathroom on first (bath / shower / tap) and toilet on top floor (tap). I currently have a boiler (Worcester 28cdi) fitted, and the house has very poor mains pressure. The hot water flow to the 1st floor bath is about 6l per minute at best.

This results in an adequate shower if I'm lucky, but in the mornings, or when other appliances are on, the shower quality is very poor indeed. Somebody suggested that I try putting in a cylinder and a pump (the only place I can really fit a cylinder is in my basement or maybe a smaller one in the top floor toilet room).

While I can see that a hot water cylinder and pump would solve the hot water problem, is there a good way to provide a better / more regular flow rate for cold water? I've seen some combo-units with an integrated cold water tank attached on top of a cylinder which seem to provide a simple solution, but its hard to find any reference material as to how good these systems are...
Also, when the hot water cylinder is emptied / becoming empty (ie. I'm pumping more water from the tank than can be refilled), how will that impact things (does the supply stop, or just slow down)?
Finally, my medium term goal is to install solar power in my house so will be migrating all of my gas appliances to electric in the future, so is it possible to get a cylinder that can be heated by both my boiler, and an immersion heater?

The basic idea is to isolate my shower / bath so that I can have continuous high pressure experience no matter what else is running, or the state of the mains supply pressure. Any advice would be appreciated, so thanks in advance...

 

[ArtfulBodger]

Your easiest solution might be to put a large(ish) capacity cold water cistern in the loft and pipe this up to the boiler, attaching a single impeller pump. This would give you decent hot water pressure without having to do too much major re-plumbing work.

 

[Dark Lord II]

No space in the loft as it is in full use as a server room. Are you able to get hold of simple "airing cupboard" style cold water tanks?

 

[Nige F]

No boiler expert...is it a combi? I`m thinking along the lines of boosted mains set in the cellar...or possibly unvented hot cyl with accumulator Running on immersion but indirect to allow for connection to solar later ( yeah I know it`s a long way from roof but my psychic eye tells me your panels will be in the garden)

 

[ChrisR]

You can get "coffin" style long low tanks - for eaves spaces, and yes tall thinnish ones too but the cellar sounds best. YOu'd need a big tank so it wouldn't run out, from which you could pump your hot and cold. You'd have a level switch to cut the pump if water too low. Kitchen sinlk tap still on main. Two pumps ideally in case one packs up...needs quite a bit of space.