Three Types of Power Shower Systems



Posted: Monday, February 16, 2009

by Scott Rodgers
http://www.elocalplumbers.com

If you are renovating your bathroom and have allocated some budget for that, you would probably be looking for a shortlist of things that should receive priority. You shower is definitely one of them, especially if you have a gravity fed shower that suffers from an inefficient water flow at the shower head. Luckily, there are many solutions for this and installing a power shower is definitely amongst the most effective ones, as many plumbers recommend. Let's take a brief look at what types of power shower systems are prevalent in the market and how they function.

Typical power showers come with a mixing valve that blends cold and hot water from the gravity fed lines and a built-in pump pushes up water so that you will get good water pressure at the shower head. The very first thing to know is that power showers need both warm and cool water lines so that they can be used to enjoy the device in all climates. Ideally, you should connect the lines using gate valves so that you won't need to open up the whole system in case of a shower maintenance job. One could have both a manual power shower and a thermostat power shower; those with a thermostat would keep the temperature constant even if the supply feeds water to another line in your house. Once you have installed the shower correctly, the pump will start automatically whenever you open the shower.

Now there are three types of power shower systems currently available in the market. The first one is the typical power shower we discussed earlier, the one that has a built-in pump and mixer in a single unit. The mixing valve combines cold and hot water to bring water to the required temperature, while the pump pushes this water towards the shower.

The 2nd kind of power shower has a single-impeller pump, which is located in between the showerhead and the mixer. You won't find many of these nowadays primarily because of their lack of adaptability and also because a better option comes at only a slightly higher price. Anyway, in these systems, cold and hot water lines feed the mixer, from where water moves upwards towards the shower head. The single-impeller pump then brings water to the showerhead, but this kind of pump requires installation close to the shower head for optimal usage. And since the pump has to be situated between the mixer and the shower head, the ideal place for it is the loft. But in extremely cold weathers, it can result in frozen water inside the lofts, and since the pump needs free air flow, the loft cannot be insulated.

The double-impeller pump, the single most versatile system, was made to bypass this difficulty. The cold and hot water lines separately come into the pump, from where water is pushed with pressure towards the mixer separately in both lines. The mixer mixes warm and cool water to arrive at the necessary temperature and a single line then outputs to the showerhead. Since hot and cold water is pushed upwards, the resulting pressure at the shower brings a fast water flow.

Whatever power shower you choose, it'll require electricity to power the pumps. Also, it can't work with combination boilers as it requires the availability of separate hot and cold water pipes. One problem, though, is that they would cause strong vibration inside the walls. So make sure that you have fitted the surrounding tiles smoothly in order to avoid damage to them.

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If you found this information on power showers helpful and would like more articles on plumbing, please look at more content written by Scott Rodgers, a master plumber, at http://www.eLocalPlumbers.com

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