DIY Doctor UK DIY Forums

Hi I recently moved our bathroom from downstairs to up, everything went to plan until we came to fill our new bath the hot water pressure seems to be very low it took much longer to fill than the old one downstairs. our hot water is supplied by an immersion heater, i considered that there may be an air lock in the new pipe work so tried the washing machine method (no improvement).The only our thing i can think may have have something to do with the problem is that there is not alot of fall from the header tank to the new bathroom also this header tank could be to small for a gravity fed system it looks like a 5 gallon one to me.
any suggestion gratefully recieved.

What you have done is by moving your bathroom, is lower your hot water pressure.

Hot water is supply by a tank in your loft space, instead of having a fall of about 12 feet; you now have a fall of about 3 feet.

If it was tested, you find you now have about 0.5 bar of hot water pressure.

I am not sure why your plumber didn’t warn you about this before you move the bathroom.

There are ways to sort this out, but there not cheap.

Get a price on a megaflow cylinder that would fix the problem and give you mains pressure hot water.

pump?with out knowing to much i would install a pump

One possibility is the taps you have chosen are only designed to work in a high pressure system, often a problem exacerbated by the use of narrow bore flexible tap connectors. Check documentation for tap suitability.

almost certainly the problem is lack of 'head', or gravity pressure, especially with only a 5 gallon tank (are you sure you're not looking at the heating header tank? that only fills the heating system, your hot water tank takes its fill from the big cold water tank). when the bath was downstairs there would have been more head. solutions: change the tank in the loft for a bigger one or raise it up higher though both are tricky options - probably the simplest and most expedient solution would be to fit a pump, this would give much better pressure but the work is best carried out by a professional. this is because you need to figure out exactly where in the system the pump would be most effective (and the most discreet as they can be quite noisy) and would also need to be connected to a power supply in accordance with regulations. hope this helps.

Could well be the head and tank size, but also you need at least 22 mm pipe from main to tank, to cylinder, to bath, and don't use a blender tap as they are 2 x small-bore pipes inside the spout.