Moving vented ho****er cylinder to loft, potential problems???

[Richard 1973]

Hi all, newbie here, after reading conflicting information on various forums I thought I would register and post my dilemma here. Thankyou all in advance for taking the time to read..........

I need to relocate HWC from kitchen as we need space in the room to put more kitchen units in.
Really no space in bedrooms above to house HWC, so was hoping to put up in loft, placing the CWS above on a platform, cylinder will be a 1200 by 450 E7 as we have no other energy source.

This is the conflicting information I have read and was hoping some of you may be able to shed light on the matter.

By the way our outlets are bath, basin, toilet (mains fed) on the first floor and a kitchen sink on the ground floor, 2 living in the property with no intentions of any more outlets in the future.

Point 1: Is there a minimum required distance between bottom of CWS and top of HWC as I have read that there is the possibility of drawing air down the vent pipe? this baffles me as surely a combination tank has the CWS directly above the HWC! ( if this is an issue, can the vent or feed pipe to cylinder be uprated to alleviate this?)

Point 2: Will there be a significant drop in flow/pressure to the outlets (or is the head still measured from the bottom of the now raised CWS?)

Point 3: Because of wanting to keep the total weight down to spread the load in the loft, can I feed the cylinder (150l) with a 50l tank and perhaps keep the existing 120l CWS to feed the tank fed cold to the bath? Again this is how a combination tank surely works (it has storage of about a third for cold water and presumably relies on mains replenishment to keep up and the CWS is just a buffer)

I Know this does not perhaps sound very conventional, but would it work?

Many thanks people
Richard

 

[lame plumber]

give up now and go unvented cyl and employ a G3 qualified technician to install it.

 

[Best]

Point 1 - As much as possible distance you can reasonably do, but have to allow for some height above cwt for vent pipe to be high enough.
Point 2 - No, there will be no drop in pressure, - the head of water comes from the cold tank.
Point 3 - Yes, you could put a second cold water tank in and have one for cold supply and other for hot cylinder feed.
But don't bother, because if you have decent pressure and flow from your mains water, then get a G3 plumber to check and fit unvented, as Lame said.

 

[Richard 1973]

Thanks for your replies people, I already have the new vented cylinder, and are capable of building the platform and running the pipework myself, it was more the design element I was a little unsure about, unfortunately my budget will not stretch to an unvented installation, thanks for taking the time to look and reply,
Richard

 

[Richard 1973]

Point 1 - As much as possible distance you can reasonably do, but have to allow for some height above cwt for vent pipe to be high enough.
Point 2 - No, there will be no drop in pressure, - the head of water comes from the cold tank.
Point 3 - Yes, you could put a second cold water tank in and have one for cold supply and other for hot cylinder feed.
But don't bother, because if you have decent pressure and flow from your mains water, then get a G3 plumber to check and fit unvented, as Lame said.

Thanks for your reply, as I already have the vented cylinder I was hoping to use it, quite happy with building platform and running pipework, was just a little unsure as to whether it would work, unfortunately an unvented installation is out of my budget, thanks again Richard

 

[Best]

Hi Richard. A lot make same comment that unvented is expensive option.
While in some cases it will be a lot of money and some unvented units like Megaflow are expensive, they are not always costly.
Moving a new copper vented cylinder to attic I imagine will be a fair bit of money in materials alone and in time.
It is very possible to do an unvented job very cheaply on some occasions and actually a lot less than putting a new cwt in attic and a new copper cylinder in. Some unvented units with all gear supplied with them are around £500.

 

[tamz]

Make sure you fit an 1" feed from the cwsc to the cylinder or it will draw air (your taps will splutter)

 

[Richard 1973]

I already have the vented cylinder and most of the kit, otherwise an unvented approach would be worth considering, but I reckon £100 extra will see the vented cylinder in as opposed to around £1000 for an un vented to be installed. I am time rich and cash poor at the moment... Was really more interested if the proposed system would work?

Many thanks
Richard

 

[JCSPLUMBING]

it can be done if you have a high pitched roof as you can get the cwsc on a frame high into the loft. As long as you have a metre or so head with 28 mm cold feed it should be ok