Water Pressure

barfletcher

Hi all,

I have a problem with all 3 showers upstairs in the house. They all worked fine until a few weeks ago and the one we use (Others are not tiled yet to use) stopped working altogether.

Got a Trition guy to have a look and he said the pressure is too low to mechanically switch on the heating element in the shower. As I said this all worked fine for the last 5-6 months since we moved in but started playing up only recently.

Is increasing the water pressure something easily done? We have our own well which has some sort of blue tank assoviated with it in the boiler house?

Any help would be greatly appreciated (cold showers at the moment

Barry

ART6

barfletcher wrote: »

Hi all,

I have a problem with all 3 showers upstairs in the house. They all worked fine until a few weeks ago and the one we use (Others are not tiled yet to use) stopped working altogether.

Got a Trition guy to have a look and he said the pressure is too low to mechanically switch on the heating element in the shower. As I said this all worked fine for the last 5-6 months since we moved in but started playing up only recently.

Is increasing the water pressure something easily done? We have our own well which has some sort of blue tank assoviated with it in the boiler house?

Any help would be greatly appreciated (cold showers at the moment

Barry

How is the water supplied to the showers? Does it come from a header tank in the attic or from the blue cylinder? If the latter, I would expect that the cylinder is a pressure vessel that has a diaphragm half way up, with water below it and air above it. The borehole pump, when running, will part fill the cylinder, pressurising the air above the diaphragm so that when you run water off through a tap the air pressure supplies water until the pump cuts in. If there is no air over the diaphragm then you will be relying solely on pump pressure and that may not be enough. Somewhere on the cylinder there should be a valve (probably like a car tyre valve) that allows you to pump up the air pressure. If that doesn't work then it's possible the diaphragm is failed. You can test that by pushing down the needle in the centre of the valve. If air comes out then the diaphragm is OK. If water comes out it's failed.

barfletcher

Hi,

Sorry for the late reply but been working out of office with no T'Internet access....

Checked the air pressure in that tank and it was fine, got a plumber in and he adjusted the pressure coming from the pump in to that tank, cleaned a small filter in the shower itself and it's fine now. The pressure at the little actuated valve on the feed to the tank is raised now and has enough pressure to switch on the heating element in the shower.

Thanks for the tip

Barry

ART6

Glad you're fixed:)