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Original poster

Is there such a thing as a decent electric shower?

41 replies

Rainbowshit · 04/02/2023 11:48

The electric shower in the guest bathroom has given up the ghost. DH wants to replace it with another electric shower as he's worried about gas prices.

Are they all shit? Can anyone recommend one that's decently powerful?

OP posts:
WasteOfPaint · 04/02/2023 12:04

In my experience they're all shit. But even if they weren't, surely gas remains cheaper than electricity? So the rationale doesn't really make sense. And if it's a guest bathroom and therefore used infrequently, this shower will surely make a minimal contribution to your bills, however it is powered.

DuchessOfSausage · 04/02/2023 12:15

Mine's ok. Does the job.

bellac11 · 04/02/2023 12:17

We had a 'powerful' one which was sort of ok. when we had the bathroom done I refused to have another, we now have one that runs off the boiler normally, much much better

bellac11 · 04/02/2023 12:17

Plus they're ugly, hate the look of all of them. Ilike a traditional look and they really ruin the look

Defiantlynot41 · 04/02/2023 12:22

@pigletjohn might be able to advise. We had one with a separate pump so was v powerful but also used lots more water and therefore higher running cost

GasPanic · 04/02/2023 12:55

Electric is 3x the price of gas, so a bit of head scratching as to why being "worried about the price of gas" is a reason to have another electric shower.

What is probably a better reason is to worry about installation costs. If you are going to install a gas powered shower that will run off your hot water system, you'll have to install pipework and the shower mixer itself which might be quite expensive compared with the couple of hundred quid or so that it might cost to replace an existing electric one with another electric one. But I would say over time the gas ones are almost certainly cheaper to run, but it depends on your boiler/cylinder setup

As for pressure, you can get pumps I think that increase the pressure for electric ones (power showers). If you want a powerful gas one you probably need to consider an un vented cylinder installation if you don't already have one, but that would probably be big bucks.

I would say probably your cheapest option to increase the flow would probably to go for an electric power shower which has a pump to increase the water flow. Then the issue will be whether or not you have enough capacity on the currently installed wiring to handle the pump current draw and the maybe increased shower current draw over your existng unit. There is another thread on here where someone had issues with the wiring that you can search for.

An easy way to at least get an idea would be to get the power rating of your current shower and check it against the power rating of the one you wish to switch to.

Original poster
Rainbowshit · 04/02/2023 13:11

The gas price thing is due to worries about gas supply from Russia. I agree with all of you! 🙄

OP posts:
Original poster
Rainbowshit · 04/02/2023 13:12

bellac11 · 04/02/2023 12:17

Plus they're ugly, hate the look of all of them. Ilike a traditional look and they really ruin the look

Agree totally!

OP posts:
Original poster
Rainbowshit · 04/02/2023 13:14

WasteOfPaint · 04/02/2023 12:04

In my experience they're all shit. But even if they weren't, surely gas remains cheaper than electricity? So the rationale doesn't really make sense. And if it's a guest bathroom and therefore used infrequently, this shower will surely make a minimal contribution to your bills, however it is powered.

Although it's a guest room the DC use it a lot as the only other shower is in our en-suite.

OP posts:
DisplayPurposesOnly · 04/02/2023 13:22

I love my electric shower, and it has better waterflow than my previous mixer. I don't agree they are all ugly.

Mine's thermostatic one from Mira and I think 10w. It's not a power shower; if you went with one of those you'd lose any water-saving benefit.

Have a look:
www.mirashowers.co.uk/showers/electric-showers/products/?installation-type=style

PigletJohn · 04/02/2023 13:46

Rainbowshit · 04/02/2023 11:48

The electric shower in the guest bathroom has given up the ghost. DH wants to replace it with another electric shower as he's worried about gas prices.

Are they all shit? Can anyone recommend one that's decently powerful?

A combi boiler can deliver about three times as much hot water (litres per minute) as an electric shower. This is simply because the energy available is greater. A hot water cylinder may be able to deliver more.

You cannot get an electric shower to deliver good flow, but if you have never tried a good shower, you may find it acceptable.

DisplayPurposesOnly · 04/02/2023 13:57

A combi boiler can deliver about three times as much hot water (litres per minute) as an electric shower. This is simply because the energy available is greater. A hot water cylinder may be able to deliver more.

I bow to your greater expertise and will bear this in mind. Currently I have the traditional boiler + hot water cylinder set-up, but presumably will replace the boiler eventually.

You cannot get an electric shower to deliver good flow, but if you have never tried a good shower, you may find it acceptable.

That's opinion, not fact. I've tried many showers, some wonderful, some abysmal. Like I say my electric shower is better than my previous mixer shower. I wouldn't say it's wonderful but it's definitely better than acceptable. A recent house-guest (who criticised my teaspoons, my kettle and the colour of the duvet... 😂) was happy with my shower.

NellyBarney · 04/02/2023 14:02

An electric power shower would be your best bet. AQUA makes a decent modern design.

Ireallydohope · 04/02/2023 14:04

Most showers heat the water so you don't use gas

I have a Miro shower which is 15 years old and still going strong

Just descale the shower head every few months

DuchessOfSausage · 04/02/2023 14:13

there's a reason why they are called power showers

MaybeSmaller · 04/02/2023 14:59

NellyBarney · 04/02/2023 14:02

An electric power shower would be your best bet. AQUA makes a decent modern design.

A Power shower is a completely different thing to an electric shower though (even though some of them may look similar on the outside!), yes it has an electric motor/pump but it doesn't use electricity to heat cold water. It draws from your hot water cylinder instead.

Power showers can be good if the existing plumbing/heating in your house supports that - I think it has to be a conventional gas boiler with a vented hot water cylinder. You can't run power showers from a combi boiler or an unvented cylinder, and in that case you would need to fit a conventional or digital mixer shower without a pump.

The obvous pitfall of replacing an electric shower with a different type is that there won't be a hot water feed already installed so that would need to be plumbed in along with whatever other gubbins the new shower needs.

NellyBarney · 04/02/2023 19:00

Aqualung also makes nice moder electric showers with inbuilt pump. They still will ne kess powerful than a shower connected to a high-pressure closed water system, but there are better than the white plastic thingies of old with 3 drops.
www.plumbworld.co.uk/aqualisa-lumi-105kw-electric-shower-chrome-lme10501-65-1252419?utm_source=organic&utm_medium=shoppingfeed&utm_campaign=googlecss&gclid=Cj0KCQiAofieBhDXARIsAHTTldqW1jMNB0c5EWqk2Er3m6lQdqBH1UsTgUvKd8jz8aNJDRTpK7q6Sz0aAo5OEALw_wcB

SeasonFinale · 04/02/2023 19:04

DisplayPurposesOnly · 04/02/2023 13:22

I love my electric shower, and it has better waterflow than my previous mixer. I don't agree they are all ugly.

Mine's thermostatic one from Mira and I think 10w. It's not a power shower; if you went with one of those you'd lose any water-saving benefit.

Have a look:
www.mirashowers.co.uk/showers/electric-showers/products/?installation-type=style

I was going to say have a look at the Mira and the Aqua LIsa electric showers as some of them are actually not bad looking

WineWithAView · 04/02/2023 19:16

We moved recently to a house with only an electric shower. I wasn't very happy about it at first. It's fine though. Perfectly decent shower.

But then when our boiler broke, I was very very thankful for it indeed. We could survive without heating for a while, but we couldn't have coped with cold showers. It made me think that if I were to ever move to a house with two bathrooms, I'd have an electric shower in one of the bathrooms, so that all bases were covered.

I'd keep the electric one in your position.

shoofly · 04/02/2023 19:23

We had a Mira Sport Electric shower in previous house. Needed separate higher voltage cabling for it (which wasn't a huge job tbh) as it was replacing a previous rubbish electric shower.
Our house now has 2 showers running off the hot water tank and as I have a bloody teenager who can use an entire tank of hot water at once, I'll be getting an electric shower put in family bathroom (when it's replaced) as a back up.

trulyunruly01 · 04/02/2023 19:30

We have the Mira Electric Sport as well and find it very good for an electric.
We have 2 showers running from the hot water but always keep one electric in case the boiler breaks down.

BanjoKnickers · 04/02/2023 19:32

Gas is still about ¼ the price of electricity. So a like-for-like showering experience, with the same quantity of water, will be much more expensive it it's delivered by an electric shower.

My main complaint would be the volume of water though. The most powerful electric shower you can fit runs at 10.8kw. That amount of power will heat up enough water to give you about 4.5 litres of water per minute (a gallon). At best that's "adequate". Our shower, powered from a 30kw gas "combi" boiler, chucks out 12 litres per minute (still to my mind only just about enough). And it's cheaper to run.

BanjoKnickers · 04/02/2023 19:37

NellyBarney · 04/02/2023 18:57

It's 9.5kw - that is not a power shower. It's a feeble shower!

You'll notice that in the extensive list of features and attributes they are very coy about telling you how many litres of water per minute it will deliver ...

User17649787 · 04/02/2023 19:39

Electric showers are mostly all crap, we changed ours though to another electric shower as the wiring was all in place and it just meant a trip to Screwfix to get a new one for DH to put in. When we have the bathroom done properly we will probably get one off the gas boiler but that is a lot more work and will need someone to fit it.