Shower installation expert needed to comment on right shower for loft!

[Blu]

The shower in our loft conversion has ceased to work. It runs hot for a short time then runs cold.

The guy giving us a quote said the thermostat must have gone, proposes to install a similiar new shower and that and an electric shower wouldn't be suitable. But I'm not so sure.

Our hot water comes from a hot water boiler in the kitchen on the ground floor, so hot water has to get up past the first floor and into the loft. Pressure is quite low at the best of times, and even when it did work (and it worked well!) we had to ban all other hot water use when someone was in it.

Wouldn't it be best tohave an electric shower that would run off the cold water in the loft, and heat it up?

We have no hot or cold water tank anywhere in the house.

Any views?

Thank you!

Bump!

Is anyone a plumber of have a plumber DP??

But you'd still need the pressure for the shower in the loft wouldn't you? From what I understand (which is limited admittedly) you have to have water coming from something like three foot higher. Somebody please correct me if I am talking complete rubbish.

I know to get decent showers in our house (three storey) the best way to do it we were advised was to replace the old system with a high pressure one. Which was fine as the old sytem was totally knackered and needed replacing anyway.

Anyway, hope my rambling has bumped this for you!

I'm hoping not to have to undertake amajor re-plumb of the whole system! It did work OK before, without water coming fom 3'above - but maybe it is electric showers that need that?

But then we have an electric shower on the first loor run straiht off the mains.

We have a loft shower. The hot water comes from a tank situated on the 2nd floor of the house. A small pump was installed, at the time of the conversion, to ensure that the water was supplied at a good pressure.

Do you not have a pump?

I don't know!
May be I should look for a pump, because it could be the pumpthat has gone, not the shower!

I feel completely in the dark over this!

I think you need a shower with a thermostatic valve which means if someone else uses hot water while you are in the shower, the flow might decline but you won't get freezing water then scalding water.

But as your boiler is so far from your shower I don't know how you can increase the pressure apart from installing a new boiler?

We had a mega flow put in when we had our loft done, but had our boiler moved up a floor from the kitchen to the first floor.

Asked my DP (ok not a plumber - a builder but ok at such boy-type things!)

If you've got a hot tap in the loft conversion and you've got a good flow from that than the chances are that the problem is with the shower.

You can't have a pump on a combi boiler - which I'm assuming you've got as you say there is no tank.

An electric shower would cost a fortune as you'd need to run a whole new feed.

The actual pressure of the shower has nothing to do where the boiler is - as it's a combi boiler.

Just a thought - Are you in London? May be that it could be furred up inside through hard water - as you say it is heating up a bit.

aha, thank you JeanJeanie and Mr jeanie!

That's all v clear - and we are in London, and I think the shower is approaching 10 years old.

If you have a hot water tank it needs to be 1 and a half meters above the shower head to get good pressure or intall a pump.If you have a combi boiler you need to turn up the mains so that water is coming into the house at high pressure we did this recently and it made a huge difference Or an electric shower with built in booster

Noddy - how do you turn up the mains?

If you have a tap inside make sure it is open fully run the cold tap and turn it until it is whooshing in fast.If not go outside ours was in the front garden take lid off and there is a little rod which you can turn it with We actually turned ours too much and pressure was too high!But if you fiddle about you can get it right.

oho!
Thanks!

We had this problem recently and it was something wrong with the combi boiler - some pressure valve thingywhatsit had gone wrong. I bet that helps, eh? God, sometimes I surprise myself with my technical know-how.