Small water tanks- is this a modern house thing?

[pwish]

Absolutely livid this evening, running a bath to yet again step into a tepid pathetic pool of water and waste yet more of my favourite bath stuff.

Large 4 bedroom family house, you'd think they would have water tanks that could hold more than just a bath tub of hot water? If even one person has one short shower, the fucking thing needs heating up again if I want a bath, and it takes an hour.

I don't remember this in our older houses,
I will hold my hands up to saying I like a full, scolding bath, but it's a standard size.

Is it just our house? Is it yet another environmental irritation like our pathetic toilet flushes?!

We do 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the pm, I should probably reduce to an hour tbh because I think it's fine after an hour, it would be much easier if the showers were electric tbh.

I have to concede our bills are ridiculously low for the size of the house, but I would happily pay more to not be in this grumpy mood this evening!

We got a big tank (300 litres I think it was) when we had an old cylinder changed for an unvented one. Plumber said we wouldn’t need one that big but I disagreed!! Pressure does drop though if two showers are run at once but at least it fills the Bath even if someone has had a shower

Just checked and ours is 150L which having googled is far under what is recommended for a house our size so I am now even grumpier!!!

My house is over 3 floors with a number of bathrooms - combi works perfectly

@Blushingm it's demand thing apparently, less able to cope with multiple simultaneous uses so bigger homes tended to not have them, unvented cylinder supposedly (though not in my experience or others as has been stated) to run higher demand, whilst also being more cost efficient at heating and servicing multiple heat zones (we have multiple thermostats in our house- though they annoy me too!)

So I'm reading elsewhere that it's recommended to leave the water on all the time with a system like mine, I have a smart meter so I might just try it for a day tomorrow to see how much it costs vs what I am doing currently.

We have a newish pressursied hot water system, with a big tank. Have it on for 1 hour in the morning and evening and we can easily get 2 showers and a bath out of a tank in the evening. Might be to do with the size of the cylinder? I believe a cylinder system is better than combi in a big house as combi boilers have limited flow rates so while they're fine for one shower at a time, they're no good when you're simultaneously running a bath and a couple of showers.

@FriendlyWerewolf yes I think it's down to the size, we seem to have an unreasonably small one 🙄

Our new house has a massive cylinder - and we are real converts. It can do multiple showers and baths, we leave the hot water on all the time as it seems no more expensive than the odd hour here and there, and the water pressure is great, even if you’re running multiple showers at once. Sounds like you just need to get a large and lovely cylinder OP!

I went for the bigger cylinder as we also have a four bedroom house and four adults living here. I wanted us to be able to have four showers one after the other without having to wait for the water to heat up and husband also likes baths. You could swop the cylinder out for a bigger one.

I wonder how much it costs to replace just cylinder.

What's especially annoying is we have a massive airing cupboard for it, it's not even about space!

I have emailed the house developer out of interest though, to ask what size cylinders they put in our size of home, see if I can catch them out 😂

We have a new build and my hot water has never run out? I often have it running whilst doing the washing up and we can have subsequent showers, never been an issue. Do you have a combi boiler?

Is this true? I don't get it? You must be able to have a hot bath?

Replace with a larger unvented and get the tmv taken off the bath

You can if you run it really really slowly as it games the system. I almost took my foot off the water was so hot in my bath yesterday with one of these gadgets supposedly limiting temp.

That means it's faulty too. Just get it taken off. They're for vulnerable people to stop them from getting scalded.

When we had a water cylinder
We used to have it on couple of hours in the morning and couple of hours in the evening. That's what it was on at when we moved in.

But the water was never hot enough or hot when it should be etc so we just put it on all the time. I didn't really see a difference in the bills to be honest and the water was hot when I needed it to be

It is an easy change over to add a larger storage tank. Make sure you have an immersion heater as well. There are two of us in our small house with large bath and big powerful showers so we have a 250 litre tank and never run out.

Also get one that has a twin coil so you could add a solar thermal panel if you wanted.

We're swapping our TMV + single basic tap for a thermostatic mixer tap so we can add a shower. The TMV is bloody useless.

The cylinder itself will be £750 - £1k - google Kingspan hot water storage tank.

Then you will need a plumber and about a day's work as pipework will likely need adjusting.

All in you are looking at £1k-£1.5k

I feel your pain, my eldest teen screeched and got stressed out tonight when her shower went cold.
Only one other child had had an 8 minute shower!
It should last for more than 2 showers surely? (4 bed house).

I had it on for 2 hours 5.30-7.30pm and tbf this was around 9pm so I will try adjusting the timing but it's so annoying,

Came from a rental house with a combi and it was lovely being able to have hot showers at whatever time of day and not worry about it

We have a large Worcester Bosch combi boiler which was recommended for our three storey 1930s house - absolutely brilliant.

We had the hot water cylinder removed and put a small radiator in the cupboard which is on low so we can still have a nice airing cupboard but with more storage where the cylinder was.

I was sceptical as people I knew had a combi said they were slow to fill a bath - but ours is just as fast as the old boiler.

When we renovated recently we were advised to put a hot water tank in as well as a combi boiler if it would be likely two people may want to bath/ shower at the same time (4 bed, 2 bath house).

Oh I think I might have this because the bath never runs as hot as the shower.

So a plumber isn't allowed to change it?

Apparently not! I haven’t took the bath panel off to investigate attempting it myself but I just top my bath up using a jug from the sink.