We have gravity fed hot water and there are 2 showers with separate feeds from the hot water tank, both showers are poor. i wish to fit a pump to improve flow through both showers. Any recommendations for makes of pump? Will I need to put hot and cold through the pump to prevent creating an imbalance? Will one pump cope with 2 showers or will I need a pump for each? Any advice/recommendations/warnings etc greatly appreciated.
Also, the 2 showers have separate draws from the cylinder, would 2 pumps be better or 1 pump and use a single draw and connect the out let to both showers?
Try a bike pump with the wife pumping it. lol
If your in no rush m8 i can ask the plumber when I'm back.
You can get a pump to do both showers or the whole house if you want.
You need to pay particular attention to how you feed the hot water into a pump, your existing set up probably won’t comply with manufacturers instructions
You also need to ensure you’ve got a large enough storage of cold water, and that pipework feeding the pump is correct, you don’t want air or intermittent flow problems.
Consider also will you get enough flow to trigger the pump or do you need a negative head option.
As for makes, we’ll probably the best are Stuart Turner and do several pumps that will cope with your requirements.
Yes you do need to pump both the hot and the cold to ensure balanced pressures at the outlet, but you can’t pump the water main (except in certain circumstances), so that will have to be fed from the cold water storage cistern as well.
When you’ve considered all that, also consider how much stored hot water you’ve got as you could be going from using showers at 6-8 litres per minute to over 20 lpm per shower.
Also what age and condition is your current hot water cylinder? Are you in an area of high scale formation with a reasonably old cylinder? If so you may want to consider an unvented cylinder instead of pumping showers.
It may be more expensive but long term may be a better solution, and the cost difference not as great especially if you have to make a lot of alterations to current plumbing for a pump.
Take a read of [url= https://www.plumbworld.co.uk/blog/planning-installing-shower-pump/ ]this[/url]
Hot and cold will need to go through the pump, they are double headed for this purpose.
Whether you need a single or 2 separate pumps will depends on things like location and throughput etc, are both sowers often used together ?
You need to ensure that your incoming water pressure isn't compromised by trying to pull too water through to feed both showers with hot and cold water together.
sig123 - no rush as wont be starting it today 😀
Bear - positive head pump is fine, header tank is over a meter above both shower heads and hot water cylinder. Cylinder is in good condition and approx 22 years old. There is enough hot water to cover both showers as they are rarely used together. Header tank is huge so no worries with supplying both hot and cold from there. No issue with scale formation either.
We went with the unvented option, we previously had a shower pump for one bathroom. It was great to get similar performance in all the bathrooms + remove the hassle (had occasional pump failures over the years). + the pump noise
22 years is old for a copper cylinder! You’d be unlikely get that length of service out of one in my part of the world, even yours I suspect could be coming to the end of its life.
54 year old copper cylinder still going strong here.
Fitted a Salamander pump to a similar set up to the OP's last year and should have done it years ago.
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This feeds one shower for just over £100 and was simpler to fit than something to boost the whole system.
you wouldn’t get a cylinder to last that long where I am unless you have a water softener and probably a thicker gauge cylinder.
Did you use a Surrey flange with the pump?
Bit late to respond but yes to the flange and softener.