Fat chance I know, but worth a punt.

To all you plumbers out there – how the **** am i supposed to choose a shower? SO MANY don’t say what min pressure they need.

I’ve got a gravity fed system (cold tank feeds hot cylinder, balanced pressure to shower) and I reckon its 2.5m head (tank out to shower out) so around 0.2bar. So LOW pressure.
I want a thermostatic mixer shower with a fixed head and diverter and seperate head.
Yeah I know ALL the lingo, I’ve spent hours on bloody bathroom websites – but I can’t figure out which one will actually work well at the 0.2bar pressure.

Anyone?
Or does anyone know of a SingletrackShowersworld forum!?

Mira Excel. It’s a relatively easy job to fit a booster pump though.

I have a shower pump if you need one.

We had a Combi Boiler fitted so you can have this one for £20 plus postage.

Mira Excel will not work with separate diverter valve.
Look at Grohe Avensys, you should be able to find something from that range, although not sure if their separate stop valves work on low pressure.

Hans Grohe do some good stuff (not to be confused with Grohe, something to do with management buy outs).

From experience though have had more problems with Hans Grohe than Grohe. Think Hans Grohe seemed to be more aimed at the CP Hart end of the business.

I was hoping this would be a starship troopers style mixed shower discussion.

Quarter of a bar…forget it ! That’s somewhere between 3 & 4 PSI !You’ll need a pump if you want to get wet. Once you’ve crossed that bridge almost any Vv will do.

I’ve just fitted two of these.

After my experiences of recessed valves & getting access to the cartridges I’ll never fit another one. The above valve is available with a diverter. It’s about a minutes work to remove it completely should anything go wrong with it.

£0.02

D.

Sorry, can’t get the link to work 😳

Can’t go wrong with Grohe. Seems to be the choice for the major hotel chains too.

Oops, didn’t read that very well this morning did I..

davesport – but…i’ve got a standard 100litre(?) hot water cylinder, so a pump will raise things to 1.5bar, shower will run at 15 l/m I guess, which is going to empty the tank in 6 or 7 minutes. That assumes my cold water fill rate is high enough too.

davesport – but…i’ve got a standard 100litre(?) hot water cylinder, so a pump will raise things to 1.5bar, shower will run at 15 l/m I guess, which is going to empty the tank in 6 or 7 minutes. That assumes my cold water fill rate is high enough too.

not quite, the pump may be 1.5 bar but that will be affected by a few things eg pipework from pump, shower valve itself,hose and shower head all which can restrict the flow. not only that you will be mixing the hot and cold through the valve therefore you are not going to empty the tank in 6-7 minutes unless you like a VERY hot shower.

fair point – but still trying to avoid the blowing of budgets by adding a pump and all assoc plumbing.
There must be ONE that will do ok at low pressure. The hot tap at the sink positively blast out, ok they’re another 1m lower so 0.3bar ish, but surely a good indicator.

It will empty in short order if you run it at 15 Lpm. However, you don’t need that volume of water to get a quality shower. The Mira Vv’s I have have have (removable) a restrictor fitted limiting flow to a nominal 12 Lpm. This is delivered through an 8″ head & provides plenty of volume IMO. I suspect you could get away with a much lower volume of water using a conventional (smaller) shower head.

By way of comparison. The HW cylinder in my caravanette holds 12 Litres of water at 60 deg C. When mixed with enough cold to make say 40 odd deg C delivered at a pressure of 1.4 bar it lasts 4 -5 minutes before going cold. IE less volume through a smaller shower head.

I think if you have a 100 litres of water stored at say 70 degrees C you’ll have plenty of HW to get a great shower. But delivering this at its natural head of pressure is’nt going to be very invigorating. The other important factor to consider, is that delivering hot & cold water to the mixer at completely different pressures may well be outside the operating parameters of the shower valve. In an ideal world the pressure to the hot & cold feeds to the shower would be the same. Providing your system with a pump will do this. It would then be down to regulating the flow to ensure you had adequate time to achieve the desired results.

D.

Sorry, I can’t type quick enough to keep up. If you’re in any doubt about the need for a pump. Why don’t you plumb in the shower mixer temporarily & give it a try. If it doesn’t work then you could try something else !

(Burpp…it’s getting late & I’m likely to be talking $hit 8O)

D.

Yeah – I’m getting to the standard point in time that everyone gets to after 3 days of ‘internet research’ – the “F^£% it that’ll do” stage.
Pick one that looks nice and add a pump when I win the lottery.

D

Grohe are indeed bombproof – but with a 3 bar pump ours runs at 15l/min for one head and 25L/min with two heads, and it doesn’t feel excessive. To do that for long enough we need a separate hot water cylinder (210L) and a 22mm direct feed from a water tank – which it can empty if used by all of us in a morning – despite having a completely separate water tank and cylinder for other hot water and cold water feeds…

Such is the lot of a shower addict…

On the other hand my mum has a great little Mira in-shower wall-mounted unit, (event xs?) incorporating pump and valves running with probably a 1.5 m head above it, which does a half decent job from a cold tank and gravity fed hot water cylinder.

Depends what you are really after – but you don’t get near a proper “hotel shower” experience without a pump and a lot of water.

jeeahzuz thats ome serious showering. do you use it for the bike too?