Hi,
I've bought a four bed house, it's about 20 years old and has an adjacent garage. It has a downstairs toilet, utility room and kitchen and upstairs there's a main bathroom and an ensuite shower room. It has a vented system with boiler in garage heating cylinder on landing and a 40 gallon cold water tank in the loft. I believe only one cold tap (usually kitchen) has to be mains-fed but I've been told that all downstairs taps are probably off the mains. The boiler is pretty new and we don't want the expense of changing it all over at the moment so I was considering getting a pump for the poor water pressure we get upstairs. Just got a few questions about different issues we've encountered.
1. The water pressure measured on an outside tap using a gauge is between 2 and 2.5 bar but the flow rates in the kitchen cold (5 LPM), utility cold (12 LPM), and outside tap (10 LPM) are massively different to the downstairs toilet cold (30 LPM) and I'm just baffled as to why that would be?
2. Should I get a twin impeller pump for the entire house? I want to increase hot water pressure around the entire house but would it cause problems with mixer showers if I just did the hot water pressure?
3. My 40 gallon loft tank doesn't appear to be adequate for the pumps I'm researching. Should I add another tank to increase stored volume or ditch and go for a bigger tank? I doubt we'll ever run out of water, we don't tend to ever shower at the same time (two adults and a baby occupy house) but I'd rather be safe than sorry.
4. A previous plumber told me the incoming mains is 15mm and that switching it to 22mm will give me better flow rates - is that right? I mentioned this to another plumber who was giving me a quote and he didn't think it was correct. I'm a novice but I love reading up on all this and I thought a house with a vented system is likely to have 22mm running throughout house and 15mm to the taps/showers?
Any help would be great, thanks!
I've bought a four bed house, it's about 20 years old and has an adjacent garage. It has a downstairs toilet, utility room and kitchen and upstairs there's a main bathroom and an ensuite shower room. It has a vented system with boiler in garage heating cylinder on landing and a 40 gallon cold water tank in the loft. I believe only one cold tap (usually kitchen) has to be mains-fed but I've been told that all downstairs taps are probably off the mains. The boiler is pretty new and we don't want the expense of changing it all over at the moment so I was considering getting a pump for the poor water pressure we get upstairs. Just got a few questions about different issues we've encountered.
1. The water pressure measured on an outside tap using a gauge is between 2 and 2.5 bar but the flow rates in the kitchen cold (5 LPM), utility cold (12 LPM), and outside tap (10 LPM) are massively different to the downstairs toilet cold (30 LPM) and I'm just baffled as to why that would be?
2. Should I get a twin impeller pump for the entire house? I want to increase hot water pressure around the entire house but would it cause problems with mixer showers if I just did the hot water pressure?
3. My 40 gallon loft tank doesn't appear to be adequate for the pumps I'm researching. Should I add another tank to increase stored volume or ditch and go for a bigger tank? I doubt we'll ever run out of water, we don't tend to ever shower at the same time (two adults and a baby occupy house) but I'd rather be safe than sorry.
4. A previous plumber told me the incoming mains is 15mm and that switching it to 22mm will give me better flow rates - is that right? I mentioned this to another plumber who was giving me a quote and he didn't think it was correct. I'm a novice but I love reading up on all this and I thought a house with a vented system is likely to have 22mm running throughout house and 15mm to the taps/showers?
Any help would be great, thanks!
