Page 1 of Weird home shower problem.. help*

To have a hot shower in my house, you have to turn the cold tap on full, in the kitchen downstairs. What the heck is happening? Any ideas anyone? Is it to do with my boiler? It`s a Baxi combi, about 3 years old.

We found this out because the shower, after having the bathroom renovated, was just luke warm, but went hot when the washing machine was on.. so we figured it was to do with the cold tap.

If anyone can point me in the right direction I would really appreciate it. My water bill is going to be sky-high otherwise!

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It sounds like a problem with the thermostat within the shower valve.


Anti.Clown.Coalition

The way a combi boiler works is that it can give central heating and switch over to hot water when a tap is running.

When you are wanting hot water , cold water is heated up in the boiler and sent to the tap, so it takes a while before it comes out.

Now and this is the important bit, the flow of water regulates the heat output, so if you use it to fill a bath in the winter, well you have to run it more slowly or it does not heat up much.

Getting to your problem that you are using a combi boiler for a shower, not a good idea in the winter, as you will have to run the water slowly to get a good heat, and thats not much good for a shower head.

It seems, that as you are diverting cold water elsewhere at the time of showering, to washing machine etc, and this will reduce the flow of water to your shower and it will heat up. Other times you are having luke warm problems.

SOLUTION.

You will have to look at slowing down the flow of water in the shower, especially in the winter to get it to heat.

Or, connect the cold pipe to a new electric shower instead. New instalation from the electric box through a 30mA RCD to a shower isolator switch to the electric shower.

TO SUMMARISE for my own house......
Central heating is by combi boiler.
Hot water to taps and bath is from cold water through the combi boiler.
Shower is electric from a cold water pipe.

Quote:
Getting to your problem that you are using a combi boiler for a shower, not a good idea in the winter, as you will have to run the water slowly to get a good heat, and thats not much good for a shower head.?? Eh? Seriously old or bad boiler if you`re having to resort to that. Has it always done it or only just started? My combi has a flowrate of over 15l/min and gives awesome showers all year round. - but even one that can do 10 should be absolutely fine. However, your logic is fine. combi boilers often need an inline restrictor fitting to the cold water supply before the shower.

Ste

The shower worked fine until we had the bathroom re decorated and the shower disconnected. It`s one of those big shower heads coming from the ceiling with a tap that goes left for cold right for hot. 2 pipes connect to it . 1 hot pipe one cold. There are loads of black taps on the bottom of the boiler.. could one of them deal with water pressure ?

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This item was edited on Friday, 26th February 2010, 01:01

Quote:
There are loads of black taps on the bottom of the boiler.. could one of them deal with water pressure ?No. Besides this, if you`re getting a shower and it`s too hot and your heating is off, the radiators don`t heat up do they? (after you turn the shower off they may heat up a little - I`m talking about actually while running hot water).
The black taps could be various things (heating top-up, cold in etc.) - but there`s no cold coming out of the boiler. Was it a complete bathroom refit? It could be worth checking they haven`t crossed the hot and cold into the shower. If not, you need to reduce the cold into the shower - usually by a cheap brass in-line connector.

Ste

It turns out the wife had been fiddling with black taps under the bolier to get the pressure down as it was in the red. That`s when the problem started. so I`ve got to figure out what tap does what to get everything back to normal.

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To get the pressure down there are two `easy` options..
Open the top of a rad with a bleed key and let it go down or, on some valves at the bottom of the rad (not the thermostat end), they`ll have a drain down `spout` that you can open and drain much quicker..

Ste