Water Pressure

[perkstar]

Dear Plumbers of the United Kingdom, I humbly throw myself at your feet and wish for your collective intelligence. Please go easy on me, I am not a plumber nor will profess to be, I am here to get advice in the hope of not getting seen off.

I have a gravity fed system in my 4 bed detached house. It was built in the 70's. One bathroom upstairs and we have a shower above the bath, the shower has it's own feed coming off the supply which feeds the bath, sink and toilet. (hope i'm making sense). The pipe work goes from the airing cupboard and underneath the floor boards to the bathroom.

The water pressure to the shower is awful. So I've had the plumber round to make a suggestion.

Option 1 - a 2 bar pump fitted into the airing cupboard, however this will activate whenever someone uses the taps, toilet and shower upstairs. My missus has a bladder the size of a wallnut and I don't really fancy being woken up by the pump at 2 am because she needs to tinkle. Cost for this work is circa £600

Option 2 - a unvented cylinder being installed, apparently this will increase the pressure upstairs to the same as it is downstairs which is currently 14 litres per minute (please correct me this sounds wrong). The advantage being that it will be quiet and should make the shower ok to use. The downside it will be around £1900 for the job.

At the end of the day something needs doing and we are lucky enough to have an electric shower downstairs which we use day-to-day. Having and electric shower put in upstairs is not really an option.
a) do the prices for the job seem about right? (appreciate every case is different) and b) are there any other options?

I've seen the shower power booster from the bloke on the dragons den. This seems a cheaper option but haven't seen any real world examples of the increase in pressure.

Hope that all makes sense. If you have any advice it would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Perkstar

 

[Rckape]

Hi, the prices don't seem too far off to me. If you meet the below requirements unvented would be preferred.

I'd get a proper check done of your pressure and flow before opting for unvented. You need a minimum of 1.5 bar pressure and 20 litres per minute flow.

If your supply isn't good enough, I'd ask your plumber for a price to repipe the shower with a pump from your existing system. This would stop the pump from kicking in unnecessarily.

 

[Simon F]

is the existing cylinder is as old as the property?
if it is the unvented makes sense.

another option, ?
run new pipes to the shower, dedicated hot and cold feeds from a pump.

massive price variation on cylinders and pumps, so that's very open ended.

another possible, raise the cold water tank height to give better pressure.

 

[perkstar]

Thanks for the advice. Annoyingly the floor to the bathroom (where the pipes run) is going to be a bugger to get up as we've had vinyl floor tiles which will mean a flooring guy in to take them up and put them back afterwood.

That said the flow rate in the downstairs was only 14 l per min so may not be good enough for an unvented system. It may be a case of getting the floor up, running a separate feed to the shower and then having the tiles relaid.

It's a kick in the nuts as at the moment we have a nice new bathroom which we only use for the toilet and sink.

 

[Plumbstar Tom]

Afraid it is the only way

Shower pumps are quite affordable but are designed for showers only so won't work well or for long if connected to bath taps, you can spend a lot more and get a whole house pump but as you say it will come on and be heard everytime.

Best options sounds like having the floor up, new pipes, floor down and a dedicated pump