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Shower install on combi boiler

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Hi
I have a combi condensating boiler and Looking for advice on type of shower for bathroom upgrade. I currently have an electric cold feed shower with OK flow rate and was looking for advice on switching to a mixer shower. I know I would need to add a hot feed as there only is cold just now but do these mixer showers improve the flow? My cold fees is good pressure but the hot is just ok. I have a worcester bosch greenstar 4000 30KW boiler and read about shower pumps but wonder where to fit it as I dont have a tank or pipes in the loft and I initially thought underneath the shower base (Raised) but I googled and regulations of pumps in same room due to wet area and electrics not allowed.
So are mixers a good idea for my house or a power shower but thought they would be noisy?

Thanks in advance
 
Fill a suitable 1 litre receptacle and time how long it takes for it to fill using hot water, this should give you the hot water flow rate from the boiler
 
To start with, I am an electrician, not a plumber. My first shower came from an instant gas boiler, before the combi came out, and it worked rather well, since the hot water and cold water are the same pressure. I had no other option really, and parent's house used a combi boiler, again good results, the only problem was there were two options with the Bosch boiler, with or without a small reservoir of hot water, with the hot taps could be turned on at a trickle if you wanted, without they had to be on full bore, and with the reservoir the shower would go from cold to hot then to cold as reservoir ran out and then back to hot as stayed hot.

However, the result is a lot of wasted water, the shower is a little better, but as to if enough better to be worth it is another question. This house has an instant electric shower, and can't see worth the effort to use in my case the stored hot water.
 
Yes, because the most powerful electric shower is around 10kW, many are less. Your combi is 30kW, 3x more.


No.

You just buy a thermostatic mixer shower and connect to the hot and cold supplies. That's it.
A cheap one: https://www.toolstation.com/rainbow-thermostatic-bar-mixer-shower/p94585
there is a vast selection of others available everywhere.
Thanks Flameport
Duh - 30 Kw what a plonker I am. I think my shower is something like 9.5kwso yep it would handle it
 
thanks for all the info guys today I did a test to see my per Litre flow rate and roughly the hot water filled my bucket to 12L in a minute and the cold filled to roughly 26L give or take as I needed to swap buckets in a min. Are these OK for a thermostatic mixer shower?
 
Fine, my shower panel is off a combi boiler .
 

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thanks for all the info guys today I did a test to see my per Litre flow rate and roughly the hot water filled my bucket to 12L in a minute and the cold filled to roughly 26L give or take as I needed to swap buckets in a min. Are these OK for a thermostatic mixer shower?
Yes, absolutely fine
 
Yes, because the most powerful electric shower is around 10kW, many are less. Your combi is 30kW, 3x more.
As shower with side jets
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and a large rose above you, may be able to use 30 kW, but a shower head which one can be unattached to reach the parts covered by the side jets with the larger units, can't have a massive amount of water through it, or if dropped it would be like a snake soaking everything.

So the shower head is designed to take enough water so has a reasonable pressure without getting cold, so a 7.5 kW shower head passes less water than a 10 kW shower head to keep the pressure reasonable, but a 30 kW shower head would need fixing, it could not have the option to remove it.

With my 20 kW Main 7 boiler, it was a struggle finding a shower head to match, if it did not allow enough flow it would cause the boiler to turn off, and too much flow, and there would be no pressure, the range of output for todays combi boiler is better to my old DHW only boiler, but it does need the head matching to the boiler, and in the main complaints that electric instant showers have no pressure is due to using the wrong head.

My parents moved from an electric power shower, from stored hot water, to a combi boiler shower, the power shower is illegal from a combi boiler as it could suck dirt into the main feed, there was a notable reduction in pressure, but really did not need to wash down the ceiling in the wet room, so the pressure reduction was not a problem, what was a problem, is so the rest of the taps in the house can be turned on with less than a full flow, there is a small reservoir in the boiler, works well with all taps but the shower. The shower used too much water for the boiler to fire up and keep a continuous flow, so it would go cold, with a wet room not too much of a problem one can step to one side, only a problem for my mother in a wheelchair, however, most shower cubical are not large enough to allow one to step to one side.

With my instant electric shower I can unhook the head and point it away from me while it warms up, although that does not take long, but with a stored water or combi boiler, it takes time for the hot water to reach the shower, so unless a wet room, having a fixed shower head can be a problem. There is simply not the room to step to one side.

And showers within a bath, even with a special bath with an area designed to stand in, there is another problem, the chimney effect, because the door does not go to the bottom of the bath, air flows up the chimney formed by the doors, and into the room as a whole, meaning the whole room gets wet, but with a shower cubical with door sealing at bottom, water is retained in the cubical.

So showers over baths often result in a problem with mould, not so showers in a cubical or wet rooms, as in both cases nothing to circulate the wet air throughout the room. So less area to dry, so mould is not a problem. I could mop the floor of the wet room, mopping inside a bath is not easy.

When I had a problem with mould with a shower over a bath, I just thought normal, needs more ventilation, it was not until I came to use a wet room and cubical shower, that I thought why is there no mould, we had extractor fans in the wet room and cubical but never used. With a cubical shower, likely they make it worse, drawing wet air out of the shower area, fan wants turning on after having a shower, not during having a shower.

Likely my electric shower is cheaper to run as well, normally see around 4 kW being drawn from the grid, the rest is from solar or battery, it would be better using a power shower, then non would be drawn from the grid, but the cost to get DHW into the shower, does not really warrant the change, but would fit a shower from DHW if I had to change it. Since the shower is downstairs, and the header tank in the loft, unlikely I would need a power shower, only if I wanted a shower upstairs would that be required.
 
I've just replaced an electric shower with a thermostatic bar mixer working off a combi boiler. Our water pressure is pretty good, but the electric shower was no better than adequate in summer and pi** poor in winter. The pressure/flow from this thermostatic shower is absolutely tremendous: you get into the cubicle and you're literally soaked from head to toe in seconds. With the electric shower ( which was admittedly only 8.5kw) you had to move around under the shower head to get wet.
 
I've just replaced an electric shower with a thermostatic bar mixer working off a combi boiler. Our water pressure is pretty good, but the electric shower was no better than adequate in summer and pi** poor in winter. The pressure/flow from this thermostatic shower is absolutely tremendous: you get into the cubicle and you're literally soaked from head to toe in seconds. With the electric shower ( which was admittedly only 8.5kw) you had to move around under the shower head to get wet.
Yes same here as the electric one as the cold pressure is blasting out the tap but through the shower - pretty poor
regards
 

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