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DIY Forum >> Plumbing Questions >> Low hot water pressure - 1st Floor Flat
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Message started by Jibberjabber on Feb 28th, 2015, 3:46pm

Title: Low hot water pressure - 1st Floor Flat
Post by Jibberjabber on Feb 28th, 2015, 3:46pm

Hello All, Hopefully you will be able to help, or atleast lead me in the correct potential avenue for a solution.

I live in a one bedroom flat, and find that the hot water pressure is fairly low from all taps. The entire system in terms of distance of all pipework, is fairly short. The Bathroom and Kitchen back onto each other with the taps within 3-4 metres of the hot water cylinder.

The system is a copper cylinder, with a thermostat fed in from the top. It's about waist hight, fed by a large header tank, which is located directly above at just above head hight.

I would imagine as its gravity fed, the majority of the issue is that there isn't enough "push" given the height the header tank is relatively low to the cylinder.

The system is just for hot water, as I have storage heaters for heating.

Could someone suggest what kind of options I would have to help increase pressure ? I've been told a shower pump might be what im after (even if not considering a shower, mainly for its pressure drop + activation properties).

However, given that im in such a small property, is there the potential to rip out all header tank and cylinder, and possibly replace the whole lot with some kind of instant heater. Similar to how a shower works, with a element heating the cold feed ? The hope would be it could potentially free up what is essentially a full cupboard's worth of storage, by removing the 2 largest items.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

Title: Re: Low hot water pressure - 1st Floor Flat
Post by thescruff on Mar 1st, 2015, 9:44am

Hi,
The height of the storage tank is the problem so a small pump should work.

Alternative are a gas water heater (if you have gas) or an unvented cylinder or thermal store, assuming the mains pressure and flow rate is good.

If you just using it for a bath/kitchen, increasing the pipe sizes to the outlets will give you more voluum.

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