not enough hot water?

[greggathome]

I have a HR triple control thermostatic shower valve supplying shower and bath taps. My boiler is a combi (ariston eurocombi) with hot water quantity for 35 degrees celcius of 9.5 l/min. H&R tec support doesnt see a problem but experienced plumbers I've since spoken to say the valve needs much more hot water. I'm kind of resigned to fitting it so I dont really know what IS going to happen (although I'm kind of expecting the worst) If I'm going to keep the valve and my combi isnt up to the job I can buy a new combi - but even high flows are max of 16 l/min and I dont know if that is enough. Someone suggested vented thermal stores which I looked into but the price is still really high. I would like to know if there is some way of fitting a kind of reservoir hot water store to my present combi to boost the flow but keep price down. Any ideas/comments would be gratefully appreciated. Thanks, G.

[Ed Sirett]

I'd give it a go. I think that the worst you may have to do is to fit a smaller shower head/rose to make more use of the flow.

The shower will be better than electric (by a long way). Of course if you are going to upgrade the boiler/heating system anyway then there are a range of options to improve it.

[greggathome]

Thanks Ed, I had a manual mixer shower valve their before and the flow was OK. Automatic therms just do the same as manual ones only..... automatically, dont they? Would only really be looking at upgrading boiler if the flow was really poor, or (if I can find a nice elusive 'bolt on' to give a little more umph for little outlay) I'd do it for better performance if I was a bit disapointed with flow. Thanks again for the reply, G

[John Rumm]

As long as the valve allows you to control the flow rate of the water as well as the temperature, then you ought to be fine. You may not be able to turn it full on and still get it hot enough, but it should be fine at lower flow rates.

(There are some pressure balanced vavles that are not well suited to combis because they have no flow rate control (i.e. they are off or full on). These can result in the level of flow being too high for the water to get heated enough).

[Ed Sirett]

In which case you 'll be ok. The worst that can happen is that the boiler and the valve start to fight each other and the temp/flow start to fluctuate. Usually altering the flow rate or boiler setting will fix it.