F
Foxtrot Oscar
Hi
About two years ago, my wife and I had our bathroom refitted by local tradesmen (a couple of installers, plasterer, tiler and electrician, all working for the same company). All seemed well apart from some niggles with the shower pump, however in the last few months, floor tiles have started cracking and the shower pump has burnt out. We have a vented system with a hot cylinder. The pump is located at the end of the bath at the opposite end to the cylinder, which is in the airing cupboard.
My basic question is - what do you make of the installation (see diagram below)?
The shower pump was a Grundfos Watermill Niagara 2.0 bar. Bit noisy, but nice and 'gushy' and reasonably cheap. Since day one however, it's had some niggles.
It would sometimes make whining noises when we started showering, noises that to me point to water starvation or excess air in the supply (or both). This could be mitigated by holding the shower head very low in the bath and slowly turning the shower valve from cold to hot when we first used the pump.
It also cycled once whenever basin taps were shut off. E.g. run the bathroom basin hot tap, switch it off, pump switches itself on for half a second then turns off again. Occasionally it would carry on cycling until I switch off the pump at the isolator switch. We then got used to switching it on for a shower then off straight after.
So following the failure, I did some reading of Grundfos installation documents and investigated the pipework. The installer has:
- Used 15mm piping on the input and output (insufficient flow).
- Used unsecured (but stiff) plastic piping from the airing cupboard to the pump at the end of the bath (potentially provoking the water hammering effect?).
- Teed off the hot water vent pipe from the cylinder for the hot supply, rather than using a dedicated feed to the cylinder via an Essex or Surrey flange (encouraging air in supply).
- Teed off the cold water tank supply to the cylinder for the pumped cold supply (above the cylinder).
I am led to believe that the above is classified as an incorrect installation and that he should have used a dedicated feed for hot and cold, a flange to minimise air uptake by the pump, and 22mm pipes for certainly input and preferably output also.
The second issue is the floor tiles. In the past few months, they've started cracking. The lines of the cracks seem to follow the floorboard joists. I remember them saying they used waterproof ply or something but surely they shouldn't crack after two years?
The only other relevant pieces of information I can think of, are that we have no immersion heater and the cylinder thermostat is set to 60 degrees C.
Very grateful for any help you can offer. Here is a diagram of the installation:
http://img508.imageshack.us/i/bathroom2.png/
Oscar.
About two years ago, my wife and I had our bathroom refitted by local tradesmen (a couple of installers, plasterer, tiler and electrician, all working for the same company). All seemed well apart from some niggles with the shower pump, however in the last few months, floor tiles have started cracking and the shower pump has burnt out. We have a vented system with a hot cylinder. The pump is located at the end of the bath at the opposite end to the cylinder, which is in the airing cupboard.
My basic question is - what do you make of the installation (see diagram below)?
The shower pump was a Grundfos Watermill Niagara 2.0 bar. Bit noisy, but nice and 'gushy' and reasonably cheap. Since day one however, it's had some niggles.
It would sometimes make whining noises when we started showering, noises that to me point to water starvation or excess air in the supply (or both). This could be mitigated by holding the shower head very low in the bath and slowly turning the shower valve from cold to hot when we first used the pump.
It also cycled once whenever basin taps were shut off. E.g. run the bathroom basin hot tap, switch it off, pump switches itself on for half a second then turns off again. Occasionally it would carry on cycling until I switch off the pump at the isolator switch. We then got used to switching it on for a shower then off straight after.
So following the failure, I did some reading of Grundfos installation documents and investigated the pipework. The installer has:
- Used 15mm piping on the input and output (insufficient flow).
- Used unsecured (but stiff) plastic piping from the airing cupboard to the pump at the end of the bath (potentially provoking the water hammering effect?).
- Teed off the hot water vent pipe from the cylinder for the hot supply, rather than using a dedicated feed to the cylinder via an Essex or Surrey flange (encouraging air in supply).
- Teed off the cold water tank supply to the cylinder for the pumped cold supply (above the cylinder).
I am led to believe that the above is classified as an incorrect installation and that he should have used a dedicated feed for hot and cold, a flange to minimise air uptake by the pump, and 22mm pipes for certainly input and preferably output also.
The second issue is the floor tiles. In the past few months, they've started cracking. The lines of the cracks seem to follow the floorboard joists. I remember them saying they used waterproof ply or something but surely they shouldn't crack after two years?
The only other relevant pieces of information I can think of, are that we have no immersion heater and the cylinder thermostat is set to 60 degrees C.
Very grateful for any help you can offer. Here is a diagram of the installation:
http://img508.imageshack.us/i/bathroom2.png/
Oscar.
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