No cold water in shower All aspects of plumbing questions and answers, help, tips and information

[stuartcorey]

All of a sudden in the past couple of days my shower no longer has any cold water. The shower is attached to the bath (not sure of the technical term for this) and, indeed, the bath tap is also having the same problem. If I turn the tap towards 'cold' either the water goes off or a trickle of very hot water comes out. If I turn it to 'hot' it just comes out hot as normal.

The bathroom sink tap works fine and so does the kitchen sink tap.

Strangely though, if I move the bathroom tap to hot and turn it on about halfway, some cold water will come out in the shower and make it just about bearable enough to use. But, if I do this for about 5 minutes the water (hot and cold) in the shower will turn off completely for a couple of minutes.

Can anyone help? Is there anymore info you'd need to suggest an answer?

Thanks.

[stuartcorey]

Over the weekend I did a bit more investigating and have found that when I turn the shower/bath tap to cold there are intermittent small spurts of cold water coming out. At the same time there is a groaning noise which is coming from a couple of pipes in my airing cupboard and happens every time the cold water comes out. The pipes seem to flex at the same time and I'm guessing that the cold water is being pumped into the shower through these pipes but the pumping is not being sustained for some reason. Also, when I turn my sink tap on the shower works properly in terms of flowing water coming out at the right temperature, but the volume of the flow is still reduced. Quite why this is happening I don't know. Any ideas?

Thanks.