Poor hot water flow to taps All aspects of plumbing questions and answers, help, tips and information

[rolandk]

Hi there,
I have a problem with the hot water flow in the house as it takes a while to get hot water at the taps. I was considering a recirculating pump but first can I ask a possibly daft question? We are all electric so water is heated solely by immersion heaters. Would an alternative be an unvented system to get better flow or is this impossible with just immersion heaters and no boiler!

Cheers,
Roland

[rosebery]

In this case we need to differentiate between:

a) the hot water takes a long time to get there although the pressure is fine and;

b) the water just comes out in a dribble whether its hot or cold.

Which one is it?

The former is a function of unlagged pipes and long pipe runs where no water has been drawn off for a while, and it sits in the pipe and looses temperature. Neither pumping it nor an unvented will change much in that respect.

The latter suggests that pumping it or an unvented at mains pressure might give you a better result. But your mains pressure MUST be adequate to support an unvented operation. Have you measured it?

You can fit an unvented that works only on its inbuilt immersion heater but they are expensive to run that way and it will take aeons to see a benefit to you in cost terms.

Cheers

[derek b]

h i, i have a vented hot water cylinder,the water takes alone time to heat up,but do not get hot only warm.the pipe from the boiler to the cylinder is cold but the return pipe is hot.

[rosebery]

"h i, i have a vented hot water cylinder,the water takes alone time to heat up,but do not get hot only warm.the pipe from the boiler to the cylinder is cold but the return pipe is hot."

Yours is a quite different problem. First thought is that you either have a blockage in your primary or there is an airlock in the cylinder coil.

Is the CH working OK?

Cheers