Electric showers

[fred]

Why are the Triton 10.8kw models all shown as for mains water only?

[NY]

Maybe they have a minimum flow rate and/or pressure that a typical tank-fed cold water system couldn't manage. Why anyone would want tank-fed cold water bewilders me, since the same feed cannot also feed the bathroom taps where you might want to drink the water.

Are new houses still built with tank-fed hot or cold water, or is everything mains-fed these days?

[Max Demian]

Tank-fed cold is better for mixing hot and cold, such as a shower. There's no reason why you shouldn't drink tank water provided the tank is clean and covered and not in a distant attic with rats swimming around in it.

[PeterC]

IME with the present shower, the main reason (apart from those above) is to get sufficient back pressure. A shower will have a switch to cut out if the BP is too low and an over-temperature cut-out as well. Mine needs quite a lot of BP, so much that the spray was borderline dangerouse to any cuts and the eyes. I used a flanged 6mm wall plug in the input end of the hose, cutting it down gradually to get sufficient flow. So long as the throughput and temp. rise are OK it doesn't matter where the constriction is; the challenge is to get a satisfactory spray as most heads need too much water. If you use the higher powers these factors aren't so difficult to satisfy.

[fred]

So I presume a pump would fix that. Our mains water pressure is very low. Water just about creeps up to the tap and falls out.

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Presumably they do not pump, and gravity fed water is low pressure. Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Most are mains fed. We still have a loft tank. One thing about it though, if the water does fail you can easily boil tank water and drink it, actually its probably not going to kill you as it is in most cases. Brian

[David]

You would have to pump tank water (can't suck water out of the mains). In which case IMHO you are far better off heating a cylinder and then pumping tank water through hot and cold. Far better shower than any electric shower, and better than most if not all combis.

Cheers

Dave R

[williamwright]

They don't swim for long.

Bill

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

Why ? I find mains pressure hot and cold mix very well, but then I use a thermal store tank with a hot water coil, all the taps hot and cold deliver potable water - but I only drink the stuff that goes through the RO filter.

[Max Demian]

I'm assuming that the hot is tank-fed in any case, as it usually is if there is an immersion. The mains pressure may be much more.

[Max Demian]

One of the flats on the second floor of my block has a (noisy, sometimes leaky) pump to increase the pressure. I don't know how it works or whether it's really needed.

[Theo]

We have a Cara 10.8kW - I'm not sure if it's plumbed off (feeble) mains or the tank. You can't have any other water demands in the house or it will cut out and refuse to do anything but cold for some minutes. The dial takes your trickle of water from 'cold' to 27 varieties of scalding hot with a temporary and variable sweet spot in between.

I hate it.

Theo

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

Ah mix like with like, but a tank fed shower isn't that called a dribble ? There's an immersion in my thermal store tank but I've never bothered to connect it up (3kW, 500 litre .. nah).

[Vir Campestris]

We had a new bathroom fitted upstairs. I made a point of having the cold feed be straight mains water as we clean our teeth in it.

We then converted the original downstairs bathroom to a walk-in shower. As it's downstairs the pressure is OK. I made a point of having the cold be from the tank; if the water board mess up and cut us off we've got a tank full of toilet flushes.

Andy