Every house that I have ever rented in France, plus all the in-laws houses, all have plumbing where the cold water supply to every tap/appliance is run direct from the mains, therefore no cold water tank.
Are their any fundamental reasons why we (in the UK) prefer to use the cold water tank supply for all but (usually) the kitchen sink. Water pressure perhaps?
Just curious.
AndyP
-- "Wisest are they that know they do not know." Socrates
I'm not aware that we do! All the houses I've owned have had all the cold taps directly supplied from the mains, with the water tank simply being the header for the hot system.
Roger
That's how my house is set up, too - the cold cistern/tank only supplies the hot water tank.
We are just backwards. But about half of the systems going into new homes are mains pressure systems. We banned them until 1986, yet an Englishman invented them.
The traditional British/Irish system does have its advantage: in a water outage you have stored water for flushes and drinking if boiled. It has no moving parts except the ballcock in the cold tank, so very reliable, whereas the unvented system has complex pressure control valves and expensive high pressure cylinders. All is at low pressure, so cheaper low pressure taps, that don't drip as much, and cylinders.
The only tap you need high pressure is at the showers, so you can now buy showers with integrated shower pumps, solving that problem (poor showers and sluggish British plumbing is still a joke on the Continent and in the USA). They also take more piping.
The Continental mains are designed to carry high pressures and high flows, with little influence from one draw-off tap to another. In the US it is common to see a 1 1/2" main entering a house. I noticed last week that in a new
Our system is historical (the UK developed the first water systems in the modern era), where the main reservoirs and mains pipes were not big enough when towns expanded. The same thought of built in expansion that went into London's sewers did not go into the water systems. There is a reservoir in all the lofts all over a city; the reservoir cost is partyly pushed onto the consumer. We have not changed as the system works being perfected with time and we are familiar with it. The cold tank is in a unused part of the house, the loft, as we still install cold roofs (backwards again). If we had warm roofs the area up there would be used and we would do what the rest of the world does and use mains pressure systems.
Most also have cheaper electricity bills which make it easier to have sealed mains pressure hot water systems as well.
These can be run off gas.
Because you are Brits? Ways of doing things differ from country to country. Sometimes, national variations are just a waste of money, but wouldn't it be sort of boring if we were to do away with these differences? It would be like modern cars: All look the same. Sure, it's functional and efficient, but boring.
/Clas-Henrik
IIRC the water byelaws were changed in the arly 1980s to permit the use of mains cold taps throughout the house. Slowly when houses are refurbished or combi boilers fitted or unvented cylinder/heat stores are installed the picture will change.
of mains cold taps throughout the house.
This setup seems to have always been the norm in certain parts of the country - I've lived in various towns/cities around the north & midlands and I've only ever seen one house that had the cold taps run from a header tank, all the others (of varying ages) were fed direct from the mains.
Nick
Yep. But even that works out cheaper than over here.
Strange - I thought it was normal to have all the cold taps fed from the mains, that's how my houses have been. I'd always wondered why there was this thing about not drinking from an upstairs tap.
In France, you don't get mains gas outside towns.
Colin Bignell
It is probably historical. When water was supplied to Londoners from the waterwheels under London Bridge, it only flowed for a few hours each day, so you had to have a storage tank if you wanted water at other times. A lot of French houses still have a supply pumped from a well, although, if they have mains water, that is only supposed to be used for watering the garden..
Colin Bignell
Nor inside many towns. Even parts of Paris don't have it, but bottled gas is delivered and the empties collected like we [used to] do with milk.
Even stranger. In most houses are cold water is mains fed to all taps except the bath so that a shower or mixer can be used - certainly the washbasin should be and usually is mains fed.
If your house has mains cold water to all taps, bath included, then you must have a mains fed instant water heater so that both hot and cold pressures are the same. If you did not there would be a risk of cold mains water running back through a mixer tap into the hot tank, which I doubt is acceptable by water regulations.
We have a milkman who delivers and collects bottles.
Even if you have all your water from the mains, a phosphor descaler may be on all the house except the kitchen and outside taps. You are advised not to drink descaled water.
"nightjar .uk.com>"
I believe the tanks in the loft came about when Manchester was being piped and taking water from the Lake district.
I have to go to the village shop for mine, but I wouldn't want to keep making the trip if it were used for anything more than hob-top cooking. The central heating boiler is fed from a large gas tank buried in the garden, which gets filled about once a year, but hot water is still from electric flow boliers.
Colin Bignell
Not quite bottled gas but our LPG tank is refilled monthly as required with no intervention required from us (except paying for the gas).
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