Hudson Reed Showers Anyone...............

[r.rain]

Right, any one have a Hudson Reed thermostatic shower with body jets running through a Diverter?

I'd be interested to hear what your exeperience has been with the body jets particularly. I have tried everything to get a decent jet of water out:

Changed the diverter Changed the thermostatic cartitridge removed the non return valves re-piped in a H formation re-piped in 22mm pipe to all jets reducing to 15mm repiped feed to diverter in 22mm checked for blockages made sure I have full bore valves everywhere cleaned the strainers on the pump

Nothing has fixed my performace issues. HR as stating that they will send an engineer out to test the valve out but if the shower head itself is producing an awesome shower surely it cant be the problem. They also said that I would be charged if it wasn't a valve issue!!!

Am I expecting too much from my jets? I have a 3 bar pump and I'm told this should be more than enough to produce an invigorating shower. 2 jets actualy stop working when the shower head is on full blast.

Any advice/help/experiences with HR showers appreciated.

Cheers

Richard

[Capitol]

I still reckon you haven't enough flow. What flow rate are you achieving---litres/min from the shower head only? What does this drop to when you activate the body jets as well?

Regards Capitol

[r.rain]

Maybe but how can I increase it. My plumber mate is stumped too and he also reckons its the flow rate.

What flow rate are you

shower head without the head/rose on it.

What does this drop to

Dont know, haven't tested this one yet, I will test and post back.

Thanks for your help

Cheers

Richard

[Capitol]

OK, I've escaped from picking plums, so back to plumbing! The 22l/m flow rate corresponds to about a 3-5ft head on 22mm pipe. This tells us the problem is on the inlet side of the pump, as the flow rate with 3bar head would be up to 400l/m!!! It is a 22mm inlet size pump isn't it? A

15mm inlet can't cope. It seems as though you are looking for a flow rate of around 30l/m, which with your head would require at least 28mm piping into the hot water tank from the loft tank and separately fed 28mm piping from the loft tank into the cold side of the pump. The problem is probably coming from the hot feed out of the tank being in 22mm with a few bends in the way. A 90 bend corresponds to about 2ft of piping if in copper and about 5-8 ft if compression. What I would suggest is that you double up on the Essex flange by adding a Surrey flange and connecting the two together with 22mm, opening up to 28mm where they combine keep the bends to a minimum, use street elbows if possible and feed to the pump in 28mm as far as possible. This on paper and with a bit of guesswork will give you about 40-50l/m into the pump which hopefully will be sufficient. I would add however, that if you are using water at this rate, the chance of a hot shower lasting more than 5-10 minutes is pretty unlikely, also the loft tank will empty, as the inlet valve almost certainly can't deliver more than 10l/m.

Hope this helps

Regards Capitol

[Pete C]

Hi,

Can you change the size of the jets themselves? Are they the rubber easy clean ones?

22l/min is a lot more water than needed for a shower.

cheers, Pete.

[Pete C]

Looks like it needs 2 bar min and 3 bar ideally, can they tell you how many lpm it will need at those pressures?

If so compare it to the 'flow curve' of the pump, and if it's way beyond the pump's spec you're on a hiding to nothing. Either get a bigger/another pump or reduce the amount of water the shower panel needs.

If they can't tell you how much flow it needs then stick a pressure gauge on the inlet to the panel, if it's above 2 bar then the ball is in their court as it should work fine at their minimum recommended pressure.

cheers, Pete.

[Andy Hall]

That depends on what you like and the type of shower.

[r.rain]

I'd rather be picking plums than installing radiators, or dicking around getting soaked trying to measure flow rates from body jets! :)

The 22l/m

this tells us

400l/m wow that is a lot. Yes it is a 22m inlet size pump. A

I am using 22mm push fit and there is a 90 degree elbow and then it goes into the pump, likewise for the cold. Maybe I could shorten the pipe run and make it fall more than it currently does, I was wondering about the fall its more like a 90 degree angle than a curve

What I would

Why would I not use 2 essex flanges, what is the difference? So I would just use a 22mm to 28mm T?

Are you suggesting I pipe the cold feed in 28mm too? and if not why not, not sure I understand why it would just be the hot feed causing the problem?

This on paper

The cold tank is a seperate one for the shower. I am a little worried about the hot water supply as SWMBO takes forever in the shower or used to ;)

Maybe I should try shortening the hot water feed to the pump first and then go the other route? how does that sound??

Thanks very much for your reply, I was kind of giving up hope........

Cheers

Richard

[r.rain]

Hello Pete

Your brave answering another question from me :)

the jets are chrome but have rubber type nipples, you can remove one end by unscrewing a cap and you can get to the insides. I stopped short of pulling them apart though.

Cheers

Richard

[r.rain]

The tech support person said I should be seeing 22 l/minute through the jets with a 3 bar pump and I am seeing about 15 l/m

The pump guy at Stuart Turned said the pump will only produce 9 litres a minute though, and he managed to totally confuse the hell out of me. He also stated that a 4 bar pump would only produce the same, and that finished me off...........errrr.

Well their minimum spec is 1.5 bar.

Cheers

Richard

[Capitol]

If you are using push fit, then the input side flow rates will be much worse than I have indicated, as the inserts will reduce the internal pipe diameter to about 18mm, this will reduce the flow rates by about

60%! (rough numbers). On the info provided, as I see it you need to forget about push fit on the i/p side and go to copper 28mm to give yourself a chance.

Yes, you can do that, but you are pulling water out of the tank at the same level and I suspect that you would do better to use a Surrey flange to separate the flow slightly, also, you will not need to punch another hole in the tank. I'm convinced that you need to go to 28mm copper and not pushfit on the i/p sides of the pump. The i/p to the hot tank needs to be 28mm IMO.

Yes, sorry if I was not clear, 28mm copper is required for both hot and cold feeds through to the pump. Push fit 22mm is much closer to 18mm than 22mm and will not give the flow rates with a gravity feed. The relative head loss for 18/22mm is in the region of 10/3 for 10l/m flow rates /100 ft of piping.

Maybe she'll get used to cold showers!! Does this mean that you have two loft tanks, one for hot and one for cold? If so , what are their capacities?

I'd grasp the nettle and replumb almost all of the input feed system in

28mm copper for both hot and cold supplies, with a Surrey flange and an Essex flange using 22mm then 28mm copper until just before the pump. It must be easier than messing about with lots of plastic pushfit which can never work IMO. Just as a check, I ran a flow rate of 15l/m from an approx 10mm dia outlet with a system fed as I have described. This corresponds to a head of about 10ft at the outlet point, with an input head of 100ft! For your 22mm outlet, this would become 60l/m if the scaling is applicable, hence my estimate of 40-50l/m

Regards Capitol

[r.rain]

I did wonder about those inserts! I will re-pipe in copper. I am still reluctant though to install another flange and go to 28mm, I guess I can always revert back to old configuration if I use up too much water though.

Ah gotcha, the susex flange installs into the top of the cyclinder as opposed to at the side. I definately wouldn't want to punch another hole in the tank if I was going to revert back to my old configuration.

Maybe she wont have a choice :)

Does this mean that you have

I have a seperate 25 Gallon cold water tank for the shower, this was used to feed an old power shower prior to our occupancy and just a hot water cyclinder which is a standard size as far as I can tell. Looks like all the others I've seen in the past.

OK I'm going to take your advice, but I'm going to try 22mm copper first and then if no joy make the move to 28mm and an additional flange.

Brilliant, thanks so much again, another job on the list for today!

Cheers

Richard

[Andy Hall]

Richard, I haven't looked through the entire thread here, but are you saying that this is a separate tank just for the cold of the shower or does it provide the supply to the HW cylinder as well?

If so, this does have the potential of being dangerous if the cold water should run out before the hot (e.g. if you are using water faster than it is refilling or the mains fails.

Normally, with a single tank this is prevented by fixing the tank connectors at different heights on the tank such that the feed to the HW cylinder stops before the cold to the shower.

If the tanks are totally separate, then you can't guarantee this. As a minimum, it would be a good idea to see what the shower valve does (some cut out the hot supply if the cold fails).

If you can do it, a better solution could be to connect the two tanks together (assuming that the levels and sizes are the same) using a length of 28mm pipe between the two at low level. If this is done, then it's best to have the float valve in one and the outlets from the other so that you guarantee that water doesn't stagnate in the second tank. However, if you have outlets from both in regular use, it shouldn't matter. I did this in a former house which had a restricted height space where the tanks could go and therefore fitted two (one behind the other) to achieve the capacity.

[r.rain]

Sorry I was not clear, I have 2 cold water tanks, one feeding the cyclinder and the other is on its own completgely seperate feeding the shower only.

The shower will shut off if this happens, according to their blurb. Danger form scalding you mean?

There you go, this is what they say happens

The two tanks are actually at quite different levels. I will look at doing this once I have my flow problems sorted out.

Thanks Andy

Cheers

Richard

[r.rain]

Just had a thought on looking at the isolating valves at B&Q, these seem to restrict the flow somwhat and I have them on both inlet and outlet pipes running from/to the pump. Could this be my problem?

Cheers

Richard

[Capitol]

I don't know, but I normally use Screwfix full bore valves ie 17293 or equivalent from Toolstation to obtain maximum possible flow from a gravity fed head. If your loft tank is only 25gallon, then the shower time at say 2g/m can only be around 10 minutes max, maybe this is another reason why the pump flow valves are not operating correctly.

regards Capitol

[Andy Hall]

Exactly.

OK, then I would definitely test it soon, and probably make a regular thing of it - perhaps every three months.

Obviously you would have to bring them to the same level :-)

Also, do make sure that you keep an overflow for each tank

[r.rain]

Nah, didn't do a lot although it did improve it slightly. The mains pressure is really good and this doesn't appear to be a problem. Just watched the cold tank whislt running the shower. Even SWMBI would of finshed by then....... Looks like 28mm copper then...............

Cheers

Richard

[Pete C]

If that's through the jets alone and you're trying to run the shower head as well, it's very likely the pressure from the pump will be too low at the flow rate needed.

He's right, the pump spec is for a given pressure and flow. So a 3 bar pump will give 3 bar pressure at 9 lpm and a 4 bar pump will give 4 bar pressure also at the same flow of 9 lpm.

As the flow is increased, the higher the flow rate the lower the pressure will be. This is what a 'flow curve' is, a comparison of pump pressure at different flow rates

Here's a web page with the flow curves of some Stuart Turner pumps:

1 bar pressure is about the same as 10 metres head of water, ie the pressure at the bottom of a column of water 10m high.

So looking at the line for a 3 bar twin, a flow rate of 22 lpm will give pressure equivalent to 25m head which is ~2.5 bar.

If the flow rate is 50 lpm it will a pressure equivalent to 8m head of water, which is ~0.8 bar.

This probably assumes the same flow through both impellers of the pump, in practice it might be a bit less if the flow is unequal.

So the pump will run the jets fine on their own but not the shower head as well if it needs another 25 lpm.

Looking on the above chart shows the pump can give at best 38 lpm at that pressure, maybe lower in practice if the hot and cold flow through the pump is different.

Just concerned you might be making a lot of changes to the plumbing when the problem is elsewhere.

cheers, Pete.

[Pete C]

Similar to my shower, what I'm planning to do is get some PVC sleeving off some wire and push it into the jets, so I get a lower flow at a much higher pressure.

So as the jets are 0.8mm I'll get some sleeving off some '1/06' solid core wire from Maplins which has an inner diameter of 0.6mm. I've tried it out already and it looks quite promising.

cheers, Pete.