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Shower not working properly would it be worth fixing?

4 replies

Linnet · 16/01/2012 21:57

I think,in my unprofessional opinion of course, that the thermostat in our electric shower has gone or is on it's way out as all I can get out of the shower is a very lukewarm trickle of water. No matter what I do I can't get it to go any hotter.

Does anyone know if this is fixable at a reasonable cost or would we be as well to just buy a new shower?

OP posts:
PigletJohn · 17/01/2012 11:39

" very lukewarm trickle of water"

is it an electric shower that runs off the water main pressure?

When did it last work correctly?

If it worked better in summer, and has got colder recently, one of the causes will be that the incoming water supply is now much colder. Electric showers are very weedy little things, and only have the ability to raise a certain amount of water by a certain number of degrees. If the incoming water is now 10 degrees colder than it was in summer, so will be the outgoing water.

Electric showers might be 7kW or so. A typical modern gas combi boiler will be about 30kW, so you can see it can deliver about four times as much hot water.

Do you have a hot water cylinder, or a combi?

In terms of faults, if your electric shower has high/med/low settings, verify that it delivers heated water at each setting. Most electric showers have two heating elements, and they switch on the small, the large, or both elements depending on your setting.

If you buy a different, higher-power electric shower, it will not be much more powerful, and it may need a new supply cable and changes in the Consumer Unit which must be done by a qualified electrician who is a member of a Competent Person scheme.

Electric showers are fundamentally not very good.

PigletJohn · 17/01/2012 11:41

p.s. the reason I am asking about your boiler is because there may be a better way of showering.

Linnet · 17/01/2012 14:09

It's an electric shower 8.5kw we can't have any higher kw's because we have a back boiler. The electric shower runs off the cold water supply. It was working perfectly well up until last week. If I move the temperature adjustment I get either a lukewarm trickle of water or icy cold that's it.

OP posts:
PigletJohn · 17/01/2012 16:17

it doesn't have a high/med/low control, just the one that makes the water flow slower, you mean?

Have you got a hot water cylinder?

Where is the cold water tank?

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