Stuttering power shower

[UnicycleBloke]

Hi,

I have recently fitted a new bathroom - a bit of a project for a DIYist like me.

The shower stutters quite a bit, and I'm not sure what is wrong. I suspect air in the hot side, but thought
I'd taken the correct precautions, running water from the supplies through the unpowered pump into a bucket.
To answer initial questions you might have:

- The pump is a Salamander CT50+, and is placed at the base of the hot tank.
- I added a separate 22mm cold supply from the tank to within a foot or so of the pump.
- The hot tank is a regular open-vented one supplied from the cold tank. The supply for taps is taken
horizontally from the top, with a vertical T going up to the vent and down to the taps.
- I added a 22mm Techflange (essentially an Essex flange) to the tank to supply the hot side of the pump.
- The pipes from the pump go up to the loft, across, and down to the valve.
- The valve is a Roper Rhodes single outlet thermostatic job.
- There are short sections of 15mm speed fit to connect the pump to the copper inputs and outputs.

I've seen one or two references to a U-bend in the hot supply. Mine comes out of the tank horizontally and
just bends down to enter the pump vertically. Is that wrong?

I'd be grateful for any advice.


Al

 

[tomplumb83]

Never done it like that but should be ok. Just a thought, Did you flush your pipework out before connecting pump?
Could be filters

 

[Irish]

There's a strong possibility you should've put a negative head shower pump in there, is the ct50+ a positive head only? Do you have a automatic air vents at the highest point of the feeds to the shower?

 

[tomplumb83]

Pumps at the base of the cylinder

 

[UnicycleBloke]

Thanks for your comments. It turns out that the shower head had a plastic flow restricter in it which reduced the flow to far below what the pump needs. Maybe with a higher pressure system this would be fine, but the head on mine isn't much. Making the aperture larger seems to have done the trick. Whew! I had visions of having to break into the tiling to remove the valve and clean its integral filters.

Next up, making the hot water and heating independent.


Al