Cost and difficulty of installing a boiler-run shower for the first time?

[thatsmyhouse]

I currently just have 2 electric showers (well, one has just broken...). The one in the ensuite, which has broken, is a Bristan and was amazing - 10 years of lovely, hot, stable, reasonably powerful showers, and it was digital and looked pretty good too. Bristan don't make electric showers anymore and as I can only have an 8.5w one I feel any replacement will be a bit crap. Also, most electric showers are pretty ugly/old-fashioned looking.

Over the bath I have another one (not sure of make) that looks good but is utterly shit and never gets more than lukewarm and is basically unusable. I'm having real difficulty in finding anyone to fit an electric shower as well - and someone I did find said he would only do the Tritan multifit or something, which I'm sure will be crap.

I'm wondering if I should bite the bullet and get a proper one over the bath to run off the boiler. I know it would need a pump and I don't have a combi. It's a 4 bed house, if relevant. I remember discussing this with plumbers years ago and it all sounded complicated, expensive and not guaranteed to get me a good shower, but maybe I'm remembering wrongly.

Can anyone advise - would I be best sticking with the electric in the ensuite and if so any recommendations and advice on who can fit it? Or how much it's likely to cost to go for the other option and what is the risk of it being a bit shit at the end? I'm in the East Midlands if relevant. Any thoughts very much appreciated!

It depends where your current pipes run in the bathroom but it would involve connecting into the existing hot water pipes and then running those to the shower.

In the ensuite, you would probably need to rip the shower out, put pipes in, reptile and the reinstall the shower.

You might be able to fit a surface mounted style one to the bath reasonably easily. Like this sort of thing www.bathroom-house.co.uk/oslo-chrome-deck-mounted-thermostatic-bath-shower-mixer-tap-3-way-square-rigid-riser-shower-rail-kit-modern-square-design

You can figure out what an over bath shower would be like by buying one of those cheap rubber tap attachment things on amazon and attaching it to your bath taps and trying it out.

Not sure a pump is necessary depends on your water pressure. As pp says, if the rubber thingy seems to give good heat and pressure then you can get a modification to your bath taps to allow them to switch between tap and shower mode and install a rail for the shower head.

In the ensuite, it depends. The nearest hot water line to your shower is likely to be the washbasin in the same room, so you will have to t off that and somehow get the pipe to the shower cubicle - might be easy, might be hard.

Then again you might find it cheaper to upgrade the electric line to the shower from the fuse box and get a more powerful shower. It really depends on how close the en suite is to the fuse box.

My 8.5Kw Mira works fine, though it doesn't produce as much hot water as the combi boiler fed one in the main bathroom, it's a bit of a compromise between water temp and flow rate. If you've got a gravity fed tanked hot water system you will probably need a pump, the rubber hose thing is a good idea as a test.

Really not my area of expertise but we have two regular showers run off the main boiler [also not a combi.] One bathroom is beside the airing cupboard so the pump lives in there between the tank and the shower on the other side of the door. In the other bathroom the pump lives under the bath in the gap and connects between the shower and the hot water pipe coming in.
I don't think it's that complicated to do?

Previous house had a combi which was amazing - endless hot water though not quite as powerful as current solution. In the meantime our challenge is not allowing the teens to hose the tank in one sitting. That's where a good electric shower is worth its weight I think.

I would contact a couple of different electricians. Dh fitted a Triton easy fit shower (twice!) they are supposed to be simple to install. When we had a couple of electrcians look at the electrics in our house and asked about the shower they said they would install a wire that could take more current to enable us to have a more powerful shower.

Our old house had a shower running off the combi boiler and it was amazing. My parents have one running of their non-combi boiler and the pressure on that is good too. It is right next to the hot water tank so unsure if that makes a difference.

Thanks all - I do have an attachment thing in the bath for washing hair etc. Temperature is maddeningly inconsistent - I wouldn't dream of trying a proper shower under it. Presumably a thermostatic shower would solve that? Pressure is ok but hard to judge as sitting in a hot bath washing your hair is very different from getting straight under a shower!