Move hot water cylinder to attic?

[Bluefargo]

We are looking to refurbish our bathroom. It is a pretty small space - about 6ft x 6ft. However an entire corner of the room if blocked off with a hot press which holds our hot water cylinder and a few shelves above it.

I was wondering if it is possible to move a hot water cylinder to the attic (attic is reasonably insulated but could reinsulate as part of the job).

This would make a corner available in the bathroom to install a shower so we could have a separate bath and shower.

Not sure if relevant but we would be installing an electric shower and have oils fired CH.

I wouldn’t. If you get a leak you don’t want hot water coming through your attic ceiling, plus I don’t know if it’s even possible with a gravity fed system when your boiler probably isn’t up there. In a room that size you can probably only put a small separate shower in and they can be claustrophobic to use. Better to have a really good shower over the bath.

I presume with oil you cant have a combination boiler? We have a gas one and were able to get rid of the water tank completely.

what colour is the cylinder?

You can get oil combi boilers.

Its perfectly possible to bung a cylinder in the loft. Is the cyclinder foam insulated?

It is possible. Our mega flow system tank was in the loft conversion in our old house and boiler in the cellar. It needs a lot of pipe work though. We are installing both side by side in this house though

You have to consider that a full water tank is very heavy and you'd need to reinforce the attic floor to take the weight.

You need professional advice. If it's fed for a loft old water tank then it's probably a gravity feed. Which won't work if they are at the same level.

You might / might not be able to install some sort of pump to mitigate the problem. That's where you need somebody to look at the system.
Alternatively a combi boiler may be the answer depending on the size of house / number of bathrooms.

My hot water cylinder (and cold water tank) are in the loft, boiler it on the ground floor.

Our unvented hot water cylinder is in the loft and boiler is in the garage. It addition to freeing up useful space, the showers and bathroom taps are at the correct temperature pretty much as soon as you switch them on due to the short pipe runs.
We were also able to fit rainfall heads into the bathroom ceilings easily as all the pipe work was in the loft.

Thanks all for the advice!! I do think our water tank is up there so I'd imagine it's gravity fed but I'm going to get the plumber out to advise. I will update this when I can get some professional advice!

The cylinder is copper coloured - just has a lagging jacket.

OK, so it is vented, and it must be below your cold water tank which supplies it. How much headroom is in your loft? I'm not keen on the idea. You would need to upgrade insulation of all pipework and tanks, and possibly add heating. If the loft is unfelted it will freeze quickly.

At greater expense, you might be able to convert to a pressurised system, but your cylinder is probably 30 years or more old, as is presumably the rest of your plumbing.

If you're considering that, you'll need to test the flow and pressure of your incoming water supply (they are not the same thing)

Also consider that if you move the cylinder, you'll get a bit of extra space, but all you'll do is put stuff in it.

I shifted all of mine into the eaves which was great as it freed space up downstairs but as others have said before, when there's a leak, it comes through the ceilings below. Saying that, the leak only happened under exceptional conditions in that cold snowy snap earlier this year. Before that we've had 18 uneventful years.

Thanks pigletjohn - as always the voice of reason! It wouldn't buy me enough space if it's going to be that much work to do

We considered doing this - we're all electric, there's no gas on the site. Took advice which was in essence, " you don't want a massive thing full of hot water above your head. Get an electric combi boiler with radiators and you won't need a tank". So that's what we're doing.