But this is my gripe, on their own the shower jets are hardly jets. I may be expecting too much but I was expecting to have to install grab rails. :)
Im going to digest the above with a large glass of Red wine but on your last point:
Yes me too, I think I'm going to just accept what I've got. That said I'm still getting a strange problem when the temp dial is set to a specific temperature. The pump will suddenly start to cycle on and off. This carry on until I move off the temperature.
This shower cost me an arm and a leg, with pump over 1K!!! I dont think I should have to push bits of wire sleeving into the jets to get a decent blast. That said what a good idea, and if the worst comes to the worst I may revert to this.
Well I tried to digest this lot and couldn't, I understood all of the words but unfortunately none of the sentances :) It actually wasn't that bad. I am confused at when you state that I would only need 0.8 bar to produce a flow rate of 50l/m, this has obviously something to do with the head size but this bit confuses me, what exactly is head? (no comments please) Is it the distance from the cold water tank to the shower?
The bottom line is that HR have stated that the shower should work with
1.5 bar pump. I am not even getting a good jet from the body jets alone with a 3 bar pump and that to me is just not right. As I said in my other posts on the last measure the jets produced 15 l/m on their own.
Oops, sorry to confuse, I meant if the pump is working at a flow rate of 50l/m the pressure at the output of the pump will drop to 0.8 bar.
With a gravity fed shower, yes. If using a booster pump it's also used to measure the pressure at the output of the pump.
Say the level in a tank is 30m(!) above a gravity fed shower, this is a 30m head which creates about 3 bar pressure at the shower head. So all the pump is doing is creating the same sort of pressure or head that you would get as if you had a tank wayyy above the shower instead of a few m above, so giving a more powerful shower.
Something to try might be to get a water pressure gauge from Screwfix and check the pressure on either side of the pump output is at least
1.5 bar when the bodyjets are running.
If it is then either the problem is with the connections to the panel or the panel itself (faulty or a bit crap), if not the something is definitely wrong with the pump or the feed to the pump.
You could also check the readings and the flow rate with ST to see if they think the pump is OK. Looking at the web page I mentioned a 3 bar twin should give you about 2.5 bar at the output of the pump when running at 15l/m flow rate.
Some more thoughts. A 3 bar pump will supply about 50l/m with a head of 10M ie close to 1bar, that's more than enough to drive a shower head and a few body jets IME. However, the flow rate at
1bar through a 1.5mm jet is about 1.5l/m so if the body jets have 40 holes, you'll need an additional 60l/m to feed them!! In all probability, the body jets have about 0.8mm holes, which would reduce the flow rate to say 17l/m. So it looks as though the problem is to put
40 to 50l/m into the pump. At 25l/m flow, (considering one flow only--hot) you will lose at least 1.5m of head(head in this case is the height of the water column feeding into the pump) if only 22mm pipe is used, if you reduce this to 18mm, you can't IM estimation achieve this flow rate. If you go to 28mm, the available head at this flow rate should improve by about 1.2m, giving you a real chance. Just another thought, the pump is mounted as close to the floor as possible isn't it?, because this will increase the head of water available and improve the flow rate into the pump.
I have just measured 45l/m coming out of a not very free flow bath mixer tap with a pump on and a 22mm check valve in series(o/p side of the pump), so your shower should be perfectly feasible. You might have a Google at "watermill showers" and look at their installation instructions to see if it helps.
Just waiting for the pump guy to ring me back and the shower valve engineer to get his arse in gear. Once they have been given a clean bill of health I will continue on my quest. Busy doing windows right now though...........:(
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.