Discuss Shower flow rate had dropped! in the Plumbing Jobs | The Job-board area at PlumbersForums.net

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Warthog

Would really appreciate thoughts, opinions & advice from the professionals. Our shower flow rate had dropped from approx 6 litres a minute to 3 litres a minute (I test thing by simply holding a 1 litre plastic jug under the shower & counting how many times it fills in a minute!).
We have a relatively new (installed a year ago) system boiler (not a combi). The shower in question has a cold feed from the mains & hot from the tank (upstairs). The cold water pressure is fine. It's a Main 24 HE. we didn't have a combi, as my father-in-law was paying the bill & said a system boiler was the better option.
We had to change first shower as the one that was originally fitted couldn't cope with the low pressure (a Grohe), so we now have an Ideal Standard. which can cope with 0.1 bar.
For the last 11 months or so it has been OK. Within the last week the pressure/flow dropped.
No here's the other thing, around the same time we started to get 'pump over' (I think that's what it's called).
A plumber came yesterday (with our builder) & checked everything out (he isn't the plumber that fitted the system). He turned the speed down on the boiler pump, as it was on 3. & emptied the small tank in the loft (that was filling with hot water).
He said that this should stop the pump over. Regarding the shower, he wasn't sure! He said that the shower upstairs is gravity fed & the shower downstairs takes the cold feed from the mains (I got the sense that he wasn't sure why it had been installed like this - I could be wrong)
I unscrewed the shower head pipe this morning & it's just trickling out of the mixer.
The hot water pressure elswhere, seems OK. The shower upstairs runs at approx 4 litres a minute. Thing is, this is lower than it was when we had the 20 year old boiler!

1. What may have caused the drop in pressure/flow rate?
2. Is our new system set up correctly?
3. Why do we have lower pressure with a new system?
4. Is it possible that the actual shower mixer is faulty/blocked?

Many thanks

Paul
 
Most mixer showers aren't suitable for use with mains cold and tank fed hot. probably got nothing to do with the boiler installation.
 
Hot feed from tank and cold feed from loft tank into a pump then too the shower. How it should have been done.
 
Daft question , was water same temperature
( That cold your mixing has got a lot colder ? )

or as others have said , needs some work .

My kettle now takes longer to make tea !
 
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As Mike said, you should be looking for a balanced pressure feed from the hot and cold feeds to the shower.
Hot from the h/w cylinder and cold from the c/w tank in the loft will give a sluggish but balanced flow, this can be improved with a pump, as Simon G said.
Could be blocked filters, especially if the other taps are flowing correctly; check that first, it's probably the quickest easiest fix and needs to be eliminated as a possibility anyway.
Regards, TerryH
 
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