Mixer taps

[Andrew Vevers]

I need a bit of ammunition so I can handle my plumber. He's just installed a bathroom and a shower room for me. I ordered in all the parts before actually appointing him, and he's done a nice job visually of tiling and plumbing.

However the hot water to the bath and two basins is really slow. It takes

1/2 hour to fill the bath whereas it was only 5 minutes before. All baths and basins have monotaps where you turn a single pillar to adjust the flow and the temperature. They are plumbed via the original pipework as far as I can see except he's put ball valves in line with each hot an cold supply to each unit..

Downstairs, our kinchen sink is fine and unchanged in flow. The hot water is driven from a header in the loft so there's a good 7 - 8 feet of head.

Is this likely to be my fault for not checking out the taps first - are these taps generally slow, or perhaps better suited to a direct mains pressure hot supply? The cold supply is fine as far as I can tell.

Andrew Vevers

[Lambic Lad]

have you checked that these isolator valves are fully open ?

[Andrew Gabriel]

Are you sure they aren't non-return valves -- look similar but longer body, and the screw in the middle is smaller. If the water is low pressure from loft tank, these only let a trickle through.

Another possibility is the taps are only suitable for high pressure.

[John Rumm]

You can probably ignore downstairs since they will be operating with far greater head than the upstairs taps, and also, the required flow rate into the kitchen sink does not need to be same as for a bath.

As others have said check the valve is open and talk to the plumber. Sadly there are a number of taps on the market that are really designed for mains pressure hot water systems and can be a bit feeble on a gravity fed system. If this is the case you may be able to improve the situation with the addition of a pump.

[Brendan DJ Murphy]

Can you elaborate a bit further on the "pump" idea.

We have just had a new kitchen installed and the hot water is disappointingly slow.

Is it a feesable solution to install a pump in the cupboard under the sink?

Are they cheap, easy to find and easy to fit?

Brendan

[Tim Sampson]

THE Andrew Vevers? (ukpinball)

Cheers Tim

[Andrew Vevers]

No but it turns out we're related via my great great great grandfather (his great great great great grandfather), we both come from Leeds, and both of us like pinball.

[Tim Sampson]

Small world!

Tim

[John Rumm]

Not alot alas - never needed to do it myself.

I would have thought a "power shower" type of pump might do the trick, although you would probably need to feed both hot and cold inputs to the pump from the hot pipe and then combine the hot and cold outputs from the pump before taking them to the hot tap. (these things like to balance pumping of both hot and cold so that you get a constant temperature shower).

Have a look at

they have some starting at about 100 quid. Perhaps someone else could link to a more suitable device designed for the job?