Hot water pressure - pump or raise header tank?

[Brianinlondon]

I live in a modern top (third) floor flat in an all electric building. Heating is night storage and hot water provided by a vented 130 litre cylinder with immersion heater located in the hall cupboard. Shower is electric through flow above the bath direct off the mains which works OK.
Hot is water pressure has always been poor, and after refitting the kitchen (even with a mixer tap designed for low pressure) it has reduced to a trickle.

Header tank is located above the hot water cyclinder in the hall cupboard, giving head of perhaps 1 - 1.5 metre above the kitchen sink taps - and it's probably a run of about 10+ metres to the kitchen sink in, I think, 22mm plastic. Pressure in the bathroom is slightly better but still not great.

I've been thinking of two possible solutions - either instal a single pump just on the hot (on the floor next to the cylinder) or re-site the header tank in the loft, to which I have exclusive and private access.

With the pump I'd have to run the power and fit an Essex/Surrey (?) flange, plus in operation it would make a noise and tend to drain the (30 litre) header tank and hot water cyclinder rather quickly. However it would mainly be used for the bathroom basin and kitchen sink (don't use the bath much) so it would probably be ok.

Putting the header tank in the loft would involve more plumbing and I don't know how much difference it would make.

My question - would raising the header tank by, say, 1 metre, make much difference? I could locate the header tank higher up near the roof (giving perhaps 2-3metres extra head) but it would mean running four tubes quite a long way.

Any advice or thoughts would be much appreciated. If the pump route is best, any recommendations as to what pump would be quiet and not too powerful would be useful.

Many thanks for your comments and suggestions!

 

[JCplumb]

First thing to check is the feeds to your kitchen taps. If the tap is fed by flexis - are they kinked? If so this will reduce the water flow. If they are kinked or they flatten out on a bend in the flexi then it's a straight forward job of using a different length flexi, or adjusting the solid pipework to give them a straighter run without kinks. Also are there ISO valves on that run of pipe? If so are they fully open?
If there are no kinks and the ISO valves are fully open, you still need to check the flow from the pipe feeding the taps, turn off ISO and disconnect flexi then open ISO into bucket, what is the flow like? If it's still pretty poor then you will need to look at raising the header tank or fitting a pump.
My preference, just for the sake of reliability would be to raise the tank, if you can get an extra 3 meters you'll see a marked improvement, it won't be amazing, but your taps will run much better, try to minimise any elbows on the pipework, use pipe bending instead as it has less impact on the water.
Good luck 😉

 

[Plumbstar Tom]

Look to raise the tank for me, put it in the loft and put it on a platform to. If you have 1-1.5 metres nows then 2.5-3 would be around double the pressure.

Pumps are great but make a whurrring noise and are expensive if you want it for taps as well

Thanks Tom

 

[Staffy85]

put the tank in the loft and be done...