I would be enormously grateful if someone could offer some sensible suggestions on this longstanding plumbing/water pressure issue.
We live in a hard water area where the mains water pressure is generally low, and fluctuates during the day. Not uncommon I am sure. Husband wanted good powerful showers in two parts of the house (one upstairs, one downstairs), both to be able to run at the same time. Like in a gym or communal pool, several people have showers at the same time and that seems to work fine even if someone also runs the hot tap somewhere else. This was the requirement.
To this end around 10 years ago we had a completely new system installed in the loft. Comprising: unvented hot water cylinder, a water softener of some description, a pump and two big cold water tanks (connected). I think the flow goes something like this: mains water -> water softener -> cold water tanks -> pump -> hot water cylinder -> showers and rest of house. I could be wrong, I often am and I am not a plumber (obvs) . But that's sort of what it looks like. There are only 15mm supply pipes of both gas and mains cold water into the loft. From one of the cold water tanks there is also an un-pumped supply of cold water that goes to toilets, washing machine and dishwasher, so I could run those without having to listen to the pump going (at night for instance).
There are now two issues with this: 1) The original requirement of running 2 showers at the same time and turning on a hot tap never really worked. If one shower was running, and you used hot water or turned on the other shower anywhere else, the pressure and temperature dropped. 2) Now everything leaks. The pump leaks, the water softener leaks, the Ozo unvented tank leaks, and one of the cold water tanks leaks. I also have no hot water in most taps, definitely not in the kitchen, and only luke-warm water in the downstairs shower.
We have approached several plumbers locally, however no-one seems to wants to get involved. Why would this be? Is it a complete nightmare setup to work with that no one wants to touch? Is it us, do we have unrealistic requirements? Is there any way forward with this?
Many thanks for reading
We live in a hard water area where the mains water pressure is generally low, and fluctuates during the day. Not uncommon I am sure. Husband wanted good powerful showers in two parts of the house (one upstairs, one downstairs), both to be able to run at the same time. Like in a gym or communal pool, several people have showers at the same time and that seems to work fine even if someone also runs the hot tap somewhere else. This was the requirement.
To this end around 10 years ago we had a completely new system installed in the loft. Comprising: unvented hot water cylinder, a water softener of some description, a pump and two big cold water tanks (connected). I think the flow goes something like this: mains water -> water softener -> cold water tanks -> pump -> hot water cylinder -> showers and rest of house. I could be wrong, I often am and I am not a plumber (obvs) . But that's sort of what it looks like. There are only 15mm supply pipes of both gas and mains cold water into the loft. From one of the cold water tanks there is also an un-pumped supply of cold water that goes to toilets, washing machine and dishwasher, so I could run those without having to listen to the pump going (at night for instance).
There are now two issues with this: 1) The original requirement of running 2 showers at the same time and turning on a hot tap never really worked. If one shower was running, and you used hot water or turned on the other shower anywhere else, the pressure and temperature dropped. 2) Now everything leaks. The pump leaks, the water softener leaks, the Ozo unvented tank leaks, and one of the cold water tanks leaks. I also have no hot water in most taps, definitely not in the kitchen, and only luke-warm water in the downstairs shower.
We have approached several plumbers locally, however no-one seems to wants to get involved. Why would this be? Is it a complete nightmare setup to work with that no one wants to touch? Is it us, do we have unrealistic requirements? Is there any way forward with this?
Many thanks for reading
