Bungalow hot water pressure is down to a trickle.

[Railman]

Hi would like some advice if possibl, we bought a bungalow 5 months ago and the hot water is just a trickle.
There has been a shower pump fitted and that’s ok but the kitchen and bathroom hot taps just don’t have any pressur. Is it possible to’T’ off the shower feed and fit another pump for the kitchen and bathroom. The cold water is ok plenty of pressure.
If this is possible would it be ok to use push on fittings and which would be the best to buy I’ve not used these before, always used soldered fittings.
Many thanks

 

[Aquarius]

Firstly check your cold water tank to make sure there’s enough replenishment from using hot water via the pump, this may explain your trickle.

 

[townfanjon]

If its as bad as you say and you cant rectify the problem you may be able to pump the whole of the hot water , but this can bring other problems .

 

[IND_Nick]

As mentioned above I would recommend you look into a whole of house pump for the hot water, rather than two. If you call up one of the manufacturers, we normally use Stuart Turner, explain what you would like to achieve and what's already in place they are normally very helpful. Also as mentioned above large pumps require a considerable amount of available water in the cisterns so these ofter have to be upgraded or replaced.

 

[gpbeck]

Presumably there is already a hot feed from the tank to the kitchen? How will your suggestion improve things? If your hot water is driven from a cold water storage tank then in a bungalow this may well be at low pressure. Are your taps recent? Many new taps are designed for high pressure systems and work poorly with low pressure supplies. Your kitchen cold is probably directly from the mains.

 

[Railman]

Presumably there is already a hot feed from the tank to the kitchen? How will your suggestion improve things? If your hot water is driven from a cold water storage tank then in a bungalow this may well be at low pressure. Are your taps recent? Many new taps are designed for high pressure systems and work poorly with low pressure supplies. Your kitchen cold is probably directly from the mains.

Hi thanks for the reply, yes the supply to kitchen and bathroom goes from top of cylinder up into loft for about 15 feet then down kitchen wall where it splits to sink and bathroom and the cold is direct from mains. Is there any way to check if taps are high or low pressure, the bungalow was refurbished just before we bought it so all taps are new.

 

[Ben-gee]

I expect that they are high pressure look nice taps, very few are suitable for low pressure nowadays particularly kitchen.

Rule of thumb, compression valves suitable for low pressure, quarter turn ceramic disc not so good (there are exceptions)

For a mixer if you can use rigid copper tails instead of flexis you
will get an improvement.

 

[gpbeck]

I suspect you either need low pressure taps, or convert to an unvented mains pressure cylinder. Pumps would not be my choice.