I have a plumber coming tomorrow, Friday, to install a Mersey to replace the 25 yr old Medway I currently have. He says the Mersey is better for my needs, but the Medway is more expensive and appears to offer the possibility of using a shower off it. Should I install a Medway or Mersey? Help - only a few hours to go. Andy
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=================== Have a look at this:
It appears that the 'Medway' is the preferred one for the shower capability. I'm surprised that the 'Mersey' doesn't have a shower capability because all the 'multipoints' I've used over the past 25 years have been OK with a shower because they work directly off mains water pressure.
Cic.
I spoke again to my plumber - seems the main thing is that the Mersey is still in production, while the Medway was discontinued 3months ago. He further said that the only difference between the models was that the Medway had a flow rate control at the heater (rather than at the tap), and noted that this was in reality a rheostat rather than a thermostat. And so, being a flow rate inhibitor you could achieve the same thing by turning the tap further on or off. I suppose, therefore, that Baxi deleted the Medway since the Mersey was doing the same job in practice. Is all this correct? Andy
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I had a Medway that only lasted about 11 years - it had frequent problems with lighting / staying lit, and then developed a leak (think it might have been a holed diaphragm, but it was intermittent ?!?) - I could get a shower out of it (restricted to about 6lpm), but to be fair, unless you never want to have a bath i`d avoid multipoints altogether and get something with a higher flow rate !
Consider fitting a cheap combi boiler instead. If you choose well, you don't have to attach radiators to it, although the plumbing will be more complicated due to the primary circuit. A combi will provide better hot water performance and better energy efficiency at the expense of size and some complexity. You can run radiators off it too, if you ever find you need to.
Christian.
Thanks to all - got another Medway in the end, easy to fit the existing installation. Looks fine.
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Looking at their website, it looks like the Medway, Mersey, and Thames no longer exist. They now have just one unit which would appear to be the Medway in functionality, although not in name.
The Thames was the fully Thermostatic one. I think the Medway was more than just a flow control, but does not respond so well to fluctuating input water pressure. The Mersey just relied on you adjusting the flow rate at the tap for temperature control, but had a fixed flow restrictor to limit the max flow. (I might have the Mersey and Medway the wrong way round, but the Thames was definately the top of the range of the three.)
Going back over the years, they have changed the model names -- I had a Main Medina IIRC which was probably circa 1980, which was equivalent to the Mersey. They were designed to be replaceable/upgradable without changing the flue -- the Medway has alternate mounting holes designed to enable it to mount on the Medina's flue.
There is also a fanned flue version now, which they didn't used to do AFAIK.
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