Enough pressure for a shower?

[GrandPoohBah]

We recently bought a doer-upper, and the bathroom is currently near the bottom of a long list of things which need doing.

As it stands at the moment, the bath has a mixer tap at one end and a shower (plumbed completely separately) at the other.

Unfortunately, because of the mental quirky nature of the plumbing, the shower has no pressure whatsoever - I can't even feel it through my hair. The mixer tap on the bath has good pressure so I was thinking that as a temporary cheap solution we could replace it with one with a shower attachment.

So it's not a complete stab in the dark, is there any way I could get an idea of whether the pressure is good enough? Or will I just need to buy the tap set and hope for the best?

do you have a hot water cylinder? What colour is it? And a cold water tank in the loft, or on top of the cylinder?

Or do you have a combi boiler?

Is it an electric shower, or a mixer shower?

Yes, we have a hot water cylinder, I believe that it's blue - we had it replaced about 6 months ago as our old one started pissing water into our newly decorated kitchen. I presume we have a cold water tank - I've only been in this house pregnant or with a newborn and so have not been allowed up the ladder into the loft!

The existing shower is a mixer one - had it been electric I'd have done a straight swop with one with a pump in it, but as it is there's no electrical supply in that area. The reason it has such bad pressure is because instead of plumbing it in normally, the pipework has been run up into the loft from the hot water tank, across the loft and then down through the bathroom ceiling.

Shower pressure is dependent on the height difference between the supply and the shower outlet. In your case it is probably only a couple of metres which is inadequate. You could fit a shower pump in the loft, airing cupboard or under the bath.

The pipe route is normal and not the cause.

We are having a digital shower fitted. They look expensive (about £500) but when you work out the price of shower+pump and the extra labour required, the digital shower works out cheaper.