Would we need a pump for a shower?

[wowfudge]

We're looking at doing up the bathroom in our house. We have a gravity fed system with hot water cylinder. At the moment there's a shower over the bath which runs of the bath taps. DP wants a separate shower. I've drawn up a couple of plans and today went to a local bathroom showroom. The guy in there said a separate shower might need a pump to ensure the water pressure was enough. I don't really understand why when we have a shower at the moment and have no issues with water pressure. Can anyone explain and would a pump mean we'd be emptying the hot water cylinder more rapidly?

Bump. Does anyone have any experience of this?

We fitted a pump for our showers well worth it for the extra pressure. I tried to use a no without the other day and gave up.

Install the pump - makes a huge difference. Yes it uses up water quicker, but your showers will be quicker too.

We run two showers from our pump, we get good water pressure even when they are both running.

You just need to get your water pressure checked to see if you need a pump. We recently had an en suite shower room put into our loft and fully expected we'd need a pump but turns out our water pressure is fine as it is! The shower is lovely!!

We’ve just had our en suite redone and we put in a pump as the we didn’t have quite enough pressure for our new rainfall shower head and also it was positioned higher up than our old shower head.

We live in a bungalow and it makes a huge difference to the water pressure in the showers, we have a second en-suite that were going to re-vamp next year and it has the exact same shower as the one we changed in the other en-suite and when you turn it on its like having a power shower the pressure is that strong my dd has turn it down otherwise it hurts her head.

Interesting - thanks everyone. I'm wary of being told we need to do things which aren't necessary or best for the house/heating and hot water system.

Have you got a hot-water cylinder?

What colour?

Hello PigletJohn, yes we have a hot water cylinder, it's yellow/orange.

OK, quite an old system then. Yes, shower pressure will be quite poor without a pump or changing the plumbing. Have a look at the size of the cold-water tank in the loft because a pumped shower will drain it more quickly. I expect the cylinder will take at least half an hour to reheat ready for the next bath or shower, if you have a gas boiler. Three times that if you have an electric immersion heater.

If and when you need a new boiler and/or cylinder, you might consider upgrading the water supply pipe between your house and the road for increased flow, this is not a complicated job but does require a trench to be dug. A modern unvented cylinder can give unsurpassed flow.

Thank you. We have a gas boiler. There's often only one person showering in the morning anyway, but appreciate it's an older system and note the comments about the supply pipe.