Electric shower vs Plumbed in shower. Have you ever swapped from one to the other?

[tanstaafl]

What made you swap and was it the right decision?

Planning a refurb of the en-suite.
It’s got a 7kw electric shower.

Can’t decide whether to upgrade to a 10.5kw electric shower, which will need a new cable down to the consumer unit, or maybe swap over to a plumbed in one. Think they’re called a mixer shower?

Either choice needs additional work but we’ll be stripping the tiles and plasterboard off, down to the stud partitions, so there’ll be a temporary mess which were happy to go with for the right end result.

Only want to do this once , want to get it right.

If you’ve upgraded an electric shower to the latest electrical power (depending on when you did it), did it feel like a new powerful shower?

If you’ve swapped to a mixer shower , would you ever go back to electric?

We had a bathroom refit 2 years ago and went from a bog standard electric shower, to a plumbed in shower unit. We had a large rainforest head fitted too.

We've just bought a new house and that has an electric shower, and I've already told my husband first thing we are having done is fitting a plumbed in shower unit.

I would never go back.

We went from electric the plumbed in. My OH was anxious, saying it could be handy to have it. The plumbed in showers are so much nicer, better water flow, two heads for variety! Plumber is a friend of ours who's done work on our previous accommodations and it was also his opinion that whereas there was a time when electric might have been considered to be more reliable this is no longer the case,

Same as grumpy. So much better. I hate electric showers.

Hi Grumpy!

The rainforest head ... so you were after a ‘soak’ effect rather than a powerful spray?

Do you have a pump feeding the hot water to the shower also?

Go for a power mixer shower if your redoing the bathroom. The pumps are not that expensive and you can shower quicker as you feel like you're being jet washed. Our plumber also connected ours to the bath taps so if we want a bath it fills in 5 minutes instead of 50. We had to have a pump because the cylinder is on the same level as the bath, without it just trickles out. If you have a combi boiler, no cylinder and decent mains water pressure you won't need a power shower. Personally don't like the thought of electric showers, they mostly look ugly too.

We kept an electric over the bath in one bathroom but it is strictly for emergencies. And we have used it as our pump burnt out after a year. But it only took a week to get the pump fixed and then we were back to lovely shower joy.

Ours has one of those big waterfall head things but also another power shower head. I love it! I've never used an electric shower with very good flow.

No idea about the mechanics of ours, though. It just works

We changed to a plumbed in shower when we had a new bathroom. We have a combi boiler so it's full mains pressure and I love it. Huge rainforest showerhead plus a hand held head.

we have a 10,5 kw electric shower and it's fine. I'd never rely only on a boiler for hot water, it's just soul destroying to not be able to have a hot shower.

If we ever put in another bathroom I would have a mixer shower form the combi boiler in there but until I win £10k it's the Family bathroom and the triton seville for me!

We have an electric one over the bath, and mains plumbed in the ensuite. The water volume and pressure is soon much better in the mixer shower - but we specified the bathroom in winter, after a week with no boiler and hence no hot water. Having a back up of an electric shower seemed very important at that point! I wish we had 2 mixer showers.

We have both. The plumbed in shower can go through a tank of hot water stupidly quickly, which can be a problem when you want two people to go through a shower in the morning. Not a problem if you have a combi boiler though.

The 10.5 kW electric shower is fine, but we don’t have mains gas which influences our decision.

In my experience electric showers are so weedy compared to plumbed in power showers. I never feel clean after showering in the weedy trickle of water you get from an electric shower.

Electric showers are shit. I don't know you'd have them

The postive of an electric one is that if your boiler breaks down you can at least still shower.

Great replies , lots of food for thought.

Has anyone gone up from say a 7kw shower to 10.5kw?
Was it much better ?

Veering towards a combination of electric and mixer.
Electric in en-suite as it’s the least work but gives us the safety of always having hot showers and mixer in the bathroom (well it’s not like we’re spending any money going on holiday for a while ) for the luxurious ( we hope! ) experience.

We’ll be replacing the boiler as part of this work, in fact that was what started the train of thought about sorting out the shower(s).

I’ve always thought if you have a combi, you’re only going to be able to have one mixer shower running at any time? Is that still the case or is that out of date now?

Visitors have been pleasantly surprised by our electric shower...ILs had a proper power shower and they found it a nuisance as it used all the hot water and set their water bills rocketing!

There's a good difference between a 7.5 and a 10.5...you can barely get wet all over with the former!!

Thanks @LaurieSchafferIsAllBitterNow.

We’ve realised if we have just one mixer shower - in the main bathroom - we can replace the boiler with a combi and get mains pressure shower through that.

Just need to find a plumber with a good reputation and availability in the near future now.