Aaargh!! Bloody designer water taps

[RogerS]

SWMBO has triumphed again in her choice of fitting. Maximum points for style. Null pointes for practicality. She chose a Cloud 9 bath filler from Hudson Reed (bought luckily before the price went through the stratosphere.). They have a designer spout to mix the hot and cold. Not like REAL taps that have a spout each. Just connected them up.

The flow is so dire that by the time the bath is full, the water in it will be cold and/or one will be drawing one's pension. It truly is bad. I've replaced the nozzle with the only other one that came with the taps. The flow is a little better. Not much. You might get a tepid bath if you are lucky.

How can they produce something this bad? What is the phrase ...form follows function?

If I was re-plumbing the house from scratch I would fit a pump in the feed from the cold tank and one in the feed from the hot water cylinder. But I'm not.

Time for t'pub.

 

[Mike.S]

Roger

You may have fallen foul of the same error that my wife's husband made! I say this as I note the tap recommends a minimum of 1 bar pressure.

Post new unvented HW tank we (I) chose a sexy mixer tap thingy to 'take' advantage' of the 1.5bar pressure available (Bathroom salesman advice taken - pah). However, we subsequently found that it was a 'lower flow' (a high flow version was available) than usual and really designed for the continental market (where higher pressure is more common). The clue was in needing 15mm (versus 22mm) pipe to fit and even then I found two small rubber baffles within the inlet pipes - designed to make the tap quiet in operation but, of course, further reduced the flow. Whipped out the rubber baffles which improved matters and cheated a bit with the pressure reducing valve to raise the pressure (to around 1.7 bar - it's pressure relief valve kicks in at 3 bar, so not dangerous imo) all of which made it passable, if not quite the pressure and flow I anticipated.

So, might be worth checking for 'baffles' and also checking what the flow rates and pressure of the pipes feeding the tap. Otherwise I sympathise.

FWIW, our longer term solution will be to replace the HW cylinder as our CW mains is at 4 bar and higher pressure ones (3.5-4 bar) are now more common. If you have a vented system then any scope to raise the tank?

 

[Lons]

What Mike said but in addition, have you fitted the now mandatory iso valves in the system also. Unless you use full bore type they will restrict flow even further.

Bob

 

[chippy1970]

Most modern stuff is designed for pumps or megaflows which is what you need. My bath/shower all run off a Stuart Turner pump. The bath fills through an exafill so no taps just a mixer valve on the wall.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

[RogerS]

I timed it. Both taps fully open...time to fill one litre ?

Wait for it.











Wait for it.










10 seconds :shock:

 

[RogerS]

Can anyone explain to me please what exactly 1 bar is and how it relates to the height of the cold water tank relative to the tap? I'm very confused. And is the head of water measured from the top of the water in the cold water tank?

 

[Mike.S]

Roger

In round numbers 1 bar = 10m of 'head'. So, in pretend land if you have just one tap fed from a CW tank 10m above that tap then the tap's outlet pressure will be 1 bar. Raise your tank (e.g. on a platform in the loft) by 1m and the pressure will be 1.1 bar. However, if we introduce a HW cylinder on the ground floor and the tap is on the first floor then the 1 bar pressure at the cylinder (assuming it's 10m below the tank) reduces to 0.5 bar at the tap as it's lost pressure on its 5m journey upto the tap.

From what you say you're only getting a flow of 6l/min which is v.poor, particularly with both taps on. When a plumber mate checked our mains flow his measuring cup thingy overflowed - so the flow was at least 17l/min. I believe a Megaflo type cylinder requires min 20l/min input and the output will be similar.

Your poor flow may be caused by lack of pressure or restrictions e.g. the mixer tap, valves (as Lons says), many/sharp turns in pipes etc. I'd recommend you measure your mains pressure and flow rate (at the first possible outlet) and go from there. Things I came across:

- mains pipe was lead and furred up!! Water board had a policy of changing to plastic for free (MDPE blue plastic with 25mm outside diameter). Hoorah.
- solution above introduced a new problem as a water meter was automatically installed, even though we weren't metered. Meters can restrict flow rate (not meaningfully in our case).
- Removed (isolation) lever valves as they restrict flow and replaced with 'full bore' versions.
- 'Slow' bends/elbows in pipework better than usual right-angle joints.
- some mains feeds are shared with neighbours.

Once you know what your mains can output then it's logical process to track down where restriction is taking place. There are solutions as others have said e.g. a pump.

chippy - we have an exafill also -marvellous, no taps at the bath end/side and it's the overflow also. Unfortunately, the 'sexy mixer tap' (valve in fact) it's fed from is the main bottleneck.

edit: sorry, above written whilst tired and from point of view of unvented system. As well as mains pressure/flow you'll be interested in similar from the CW tank.

 

[jasonB]

As the others have said its a high pressure tap not suitable for gravity feed. Also I think you plumbed it all in push fit which does restrict flow as on say 22mm pipework the bore is far less than 22mm copper and on the fittings not much more than 15mm pipework.

 

[RogerS]

It's the tap. The flow from the piping is fine.

 

[Spindle]

Hi

We have just experienced the same scenario having had our bathroom 'upgraded', it was impossible to fill the bath before the water became unacceptably cool. Called the plumber back to rectify the situation which he did by removing some screens from the taps, this resulted in sufficient improvement in flow to at least make running and taking a bath acceptable, it still takes longer than desired but without putting in a pressurised system it's the best he could do.

Regards Mick

 

[devonwoody]

Very interesting thread.

Our kitchen single column spout use to have good hot water flow but when I changed it some years ago the flow is much slower. Yet hot bath tap is fast.
Do they still make old fashion twin entry taps with one spout and no flow problems on hot supply?

 

[RogerS]

Roger finally solved his low water pressure problem.

The Cloud 9 taps are rated at MP or medium pressure defined by Hudson Reed as 0.5 bar ..."for modern pressurised systems"....0.5 bar requires a head of around 16 ft. I've got about 8 ft or 11 ft if you measure the head from the top of the water in the tank. Less some restriction due to couplers etc.

 

[RogerS]

Very interesting thread.

Our kitchen single column spout use to have good hot water flow but when I changed it some years ago the flow is much slower. Yet hot bath tap is fast.
Do they still make old fashion twin entry taps with one spout and no flow problems on hot supply?

Yes they do, dw. I now realise that you have to specify you want a low pressure tap Trouble is they are never very stylish......

 

[RogerS]

dw's question prompted me to check our flows in the kitchen.

Just measured our flow from the mains....the best I can get is using the outside tap which is Ye Olde Fashioned one. Flow rate...10 litres per minute. Pressure is very low. If I do the same test on the kitchen tap (which is a ceramic disc mixing tap) then the flow rate from the mains drops to 7.5 litres per minute. The hot water from the same tap (fed from a gravity fed how water cylinder) is a paltry 4 litres per minute (15mm pipes).

But we've lived with this sort of low flow although I am tempted to instal another pump or two given the bathroom tap situation ...one in one of the feeds from the cold water tank and the other in one of the feeds from the hot water tank. Why so many feeds, you may well ask? Well, it is an old house, the plumbing was put in gradually over the years and in stages and low pressure or flow rates was not an issue with the taps that were available at the time. Trouble is all these Designer Type taps come at a price (and not just a monetary one!).

If I was starting again then I would do it all differently. The one later improvement that I did put in was a secondary return on the feed to the kitchen/utility area as I'd worked out that we wasted 3 litres of water every time we ran the hot water tap in the kitchen and before any hot water came out. This was due to a very long dead leg from hw cylinder to the tap. And, of course, I also wasted the heat remaining in the 3 litres sitting in the dead leg once I'd turned the tap off. Bloody expensive, mind you, as you need a special bronze pump to prevent scaling up due to the hot water.

 

[tekno.mage]

How can they produce something this bad? What is the phrase ...form follows function?

I've often found that nowadays - Designer forms don't function :roll:

 

[Harbo]

Perhaps you should do what they do in India - enormous water tank on the roof or attic which is filled at various times by pumps?
Create your own head.

Rod

 

[tool-me-up]

Our bath taps are acceptable but not amazing - boiler is below in the kitchen - mixer shower how ever does not work very well at all

 

[RogerS]

So have just connected up to the water supply the complementary taps to the bath. A Cloud 9 mono basin tap. The Hudson Reed website says that this is an LP2 tap which means it is supposed to work with only 0.2 bar. Some hope. They are lying. How on earth can it work and give a decent flow if the internal bore of the flexible tap connectors that they supply is only 1/8" diameter? The water dribbles out. Cretins..