High pressure system or pump? All aspects of plumbing questions and answers, help, tips and information

[ceca]

I'm re-doing a shower room and a bathroom. Unfortunately the type of shower head and taps I would like need a high water pressure and my system is a gravity fed one.
The house is a Victorian terraced, the boiler and hot water tank are on the second floor (cold water in the loft above) - the bathroom is on the same floor, the shower room on the first floor.
My builder has recommended installing a Megaflo pressurised water system, but this will add about £4k to the work! The other option is to install a pump, but we're worried this will be very noisy.

Other concerns are if the system was set up for low pressure, what will a high water pressure system do to the rest of the the pipes and house (i.e kitchen, dishwasher, washing machine etc... ). What about water consumption? The tank is quite small so if we go for the pump option will it mean having the hot water on all the time (at the moment it's on a timer and it's only two of us so is enough hot water).

In brief I need to understands the pros and cons of each system and which would be better for us.

Lots of questions but I would really appreciate some advice please as I have to decide soon what to do.
Thank you!

[plumbbob]

First of all, look at this topic here.

https://www.diydoctor.org.uk/forums/view ... hp?t=13965

Pumps are noisy, but of course only run when water is called for.

Mixer showers use a lot of both hot and cold water. Pumped showers use huge amounts. You will possibly require a second header tank and must consider also a good quality shower can empty a standard full hot water tank in about 20 mins of showering!

The high pressure will have no effect on the internal plumbing, but how the pump is connected depends on how your system is currently designed.

Frankly, if you feel a new boiler is not viable at the moment, I would change the choice of tap to one which will accept low pressure. Be careful, as there is low pressure and low low pressure.

To be honest,changing the plumbing to pumped can be very complicated, and will have a reasonable expense. My bet is because of the current fuel costs, if your boiler is reasonably old, you will want to fit a new condensing boiler in the not too distant future and all the pumps etc will be scrap.

[chris_on_tour2002]

[quote]The high pressure will have no effect on the internal plumbing [/quote]

all i would add is that it may expose any weaknesses in pipes/joints. a friend of mine has just had a high pressure put in and had a couple of leaks in the existing pipework feeding the rads. no major issue fortunately just a couple of weak soldered joints. it's not unheard of to get the odd leak in older pipework when converting to high pressure but it shouldn't be a barrier.