What would be the best shower type for us?

[Redlocks28]

I have been searching through some posts about showers on here and can see there are some knowledgeable people on here-@pigletjohn particularly !! I wonder if anyone might be able to advise.

We live in a 30s house with an old boiler (with tank). We had a shower in the bathroom (above the bath) which originally was really weak and crap-I think it must have just run off the mains which we hated so had it replaced a few years back with an electric shower. This is a bit better, but still rather disappointing-we can have it on full pressure (full whack) in the winter and it’s nice and hot, but for some reason in the summer, it’s too hot on that full power setting, so you have to put it on the middle setting and turn the heat up but then the pressure is rubbish!

We also have an electric shower in a cubicle upstairs (loft conversion) which is actually much better. It’s not a brilliant shower, compared to one in a hotel etc but it’s better than the other one which I don’t really understand as I thought the higher up you went in a house, the pressure would struggle?!

Anyway, is there anything we can do to make the pressure in the main shower better? What type of showers do they have in eg Premier Inn, where it’s just a silver knob on the wall but endless hot water streams out?! Is that a Powershower? Is it a massive water tank? Are they combi boilers? What do we need? If we replaced the boiler-would that make a massive difference?

Ive seen bars and buttons that say thermostatic showers-is that something different again?

Help!

If you have an old boiler and an old cylinder, I expect it is fed from a cold water tank in the loft, so hot water pressure will be poor, and cold water supply to a mixer shower must also come from the loft tank, or it will be unbalanced.

It is possible to plumb a mixer shower with an electric shower pump that increases the pressure of the hot and cold, and can give quite a good shower using a mixer. They are rather noisy. At much greater cost, you can get showers incorporating their own pump. Surface-mount any new shower or pipes as it is very annoying to smash open a wall when repair or replacement is needed.

Electric showers instantaneously heat their water. Their power is limited so they can't deliver a high volume of hot water. They can deliver a small amount of hot, or a modest amount of warm. They are worse in winter when the supply is colder.

If you are fond of powerful hot showers, you can't do better than an unvented (pressurised) cylinder. It can be installed with an old boiler, though installers like to sell you a new boiler as well. Because it uses no cold water storage tank, it relies on a copious supply of water into the house, and often this entails running a new, larger, plastic pipe to the stopcock or meter under the pavement. If you have lead pipes, you might get a subsidy. Ask your water company to test your drinking water for lead content. If you have ever planted potatoes or runner beans, you will know that digging a trench is not a big deal, though concrete drives make it harder. It does not have to follow the same route as the old pipe. If you have wooden floorboards or a cellar it can go under the floor.

A combi boiler is not as good, but is quicker to fit. It also needs a good water supply but this is often ignored, leading to pressure and temperature swings if other taps are used or WCs flushed while you are showering. If you have a small home and/or live alone you might not notice.

Wr have an old cylinder boiler for our hot water and we have a pump to give better pressure for the shower which is m
uch better than the electric shower we had .

We've always had electric, but this house has a downstairs shower just fed directly from the combi boiler. I thought it wouldn't be as good, but it is actually far and away better than any electric one I've used- in particular, the temp is incredibly stable. So much so that when we redo the knackered old bathroom upstairs ( no shower) we're wondering about having one put in over the bath. As we wouldn't be using both showers at once, is there any reason for not having two? Anyone know?

@BlueMongoose

A typical combi boiler has a power around 30kW

A typical electric shower has a power around 10kW

So the combi can deliver about ten times as much hot water

Thus capable of a much better shower

This is why unkind people look down their snouts at electric showers.

If, when using a combi, if you run two at the same time, each of them can only have half as much hot water, because the combi has a limit (usually a nominal rate of about 12 litres per minute). Depending on the incoming water supply you may find the temperature fades before the flow or vice versa. Thermostatic shower mixers will try to maintain your preferred temperature, by reducing the flow of cold in the mix, so the flow will reduce. If your incoming water supply is poor, the boiler cannot give of its best. Running other taps, even cold ones, or flushing a WC or running a washing machine will also reduce the flow and interfere with the temperature. This is a characteristic of combis.

The best thermostatic showers I know are the round-bodied Aqualisa mixers.