Can I run taps off my shower pump??

[plumbproblems]

Hi there,

Right...staright to the point!

Have a 3 storey house with hot water cylinder and boiler on ground floor and storage cystern and header tank on 3rd floor. Gravity fed shower on the 3rd floor had rubbish pressure so had a pump added which works well despite it taking a while for the hot water to work its way to the top of the house.
The problem is I paid the guy to put in a handbasin which works off the gravity fed pipework. There's no water getting to the taps. Its just gurgling and a bit of air. I'm pretty sure the water hasnt got enough fall to make it to the taps.

Solution?

I can easily tee into the hot and cold feed for the shower and run it to the taps (capping off the old gravity fed pipes). Surely this would be fine as its just an alternative type of draw off???!!!!

 

[WaterTight]

so your cylinder on the ground floor hasn't got enough head to feed hot water to your taps on the 3rd floor by gravity? well, mayyyybe your plumber should have seen that coming?

i expect the answer is no. and it will be found in the pump's MI's.

 

[plumbproblems]

Cheers for the tip!
I'll have a look at the MI's.
Out of curiosity why do taps vary from showers etc as regards the pump supply??

 

[Plumbstar Tom]

its called a shower pump so my answer would be no, its not kitted out to be used by taps. My car has tyres, suspension and and a steering wheel like a 4 x 4 but yet I would be crazy to take it off road!

Taps are used more often than a shower for a start so the life span is drastically reduced straight off

Also most shower pumps have active flow/reed switches in the outlets than turn both sides off the pump on to feed a shower, if a tap is turned on say the cold one, the hot water side of the pump will be running dry and soon over heat and then go kerput

 

[SimonG]

It will work, however it's not designed for that, if it's a salamander the seals will go due to running hot or cold at different times unlike the shower. If you remove the single pump and install two seperate pumps, one for hot and one for cold the jobs sorted.

Or mains cold to cold and a small oversink water heater, cheaper option.

 

[PlumbBobBob]

or a whole house pump, runs everything off the pump.

 

[plumbdoctor]

salamander do a whole house pump so the answer would be yes, i worked for them

 

[solar tido]

I ran my whole house off a shower salamander pump as an experiment for about a year but I got fed up with the noise.

 

[Billy Bob Bob]

quote plumbstar tom My car has tyres, suspension and and a steering wheel like a 4 x 4 but yet I would be crazy to take it off road!
well has its your car tom give it to me i will see if its up to it for you

 

[PlumbBobBob]

maybe if you had used the correct pump for the job it wouldn't have been so noisy

 

[solar tido]

Maybe, but it was a spur of the moment decision which ended up not being changed back for a long time. Didn't seem to affect the pump either which is now about five years old

 

[PlumbBobBob]

you're lucky then it could have frizzed the bearings

 

[philipb]

Hi there,I had a very similar thing cylinder in loft but due to very old house and several mods over the
years the upstairs hot supply went down then back up,so flow was very poor,i was fitting a stuat turner
pump for shower so after talking to there tech dept,i piped it to supply the upstairs hot taps
stuart turner tech said the pump will be fine even though the cold side of the pump
is not pumping.Its been like that for 3 years now with no probs.Did hot taps in 22m so you can hardly
hear the pump,fills bath in no time,customer very happy.

 

[pobsdad]

If you feed the hot from the pump,but have tank fed cold,with mixer taps,the hot could pump over the tank.