Pumping water out of a shower?

Aug 11, 2007 7 Replies

I am planning a new shower room, where it will be difficult and expensive to run the shower drain downhill to an outside drain. As an alternative, I thought of running the drain slightly downhill from underneath the shower to underneath the washbasin, then back up through the floor to a pump mounted at floor level. The pump would then suck the water upwards into the existing washbasin outflow. The pump would be electrically connected to the shower controller, so that the pump activates when the shower is started (and the shower would be automatically shut off if the pump failed).



Is this a feasible way of doing things? Any other way?



(I also thought of mounting the pump close to the shower under the floorboards, so that it would push the water to the outflow rather than suck it, but there would then be the question of how to get at it for repair/maintenance).


Sucking would mean a pump which will automatically prime, which would not necessarily be reliable.

What about a saniflo?

Few enough people admit to pissing in the shower, let alone ...

Your fears are unfounded

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On Sat, 11 Aug 2007 11:04:25 +0100, "Graham." mused:

Every canal narrow boat with a shower - and that's most of them - have to use a pump to empty the shower. Reccomend that you look in at a major NBoat marina for some info.

John Hewitt, Malaga, Spain

12v DC supply and whose impeller swelled sufficiently to prevent it turning, in short order. They supply a range of impellors according to what they are pumping, presumably to overcome the absorption/ swelling problem, but even with the correct, and fairly pricey impellor the thing still stuck. I would imagine this tendency would be severely exacerbated by all the hair and general crap that goes down a shower drain. It is possible to pack the endplate with joints to free the jammed impellor, with the tolerances between operation/ non-operation being extremely fine, assuming you need suction head. Personally I'd never use a 12v powered pump if there was an alternative of any sort.

Hi,

Do a google for 'Whale Gulper', they can sometimes be had off Ebay quite cheaply.

They're supposed to be unblockable being a large diaphragm pump, check the flow rate is enough for what you want though.

cheers, Pete.

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