Adding pump to gravity-fed water system.

Our water pressure upstairs (coming from the attic tank) is absolutely rubbish and I'm thinking of getting an in-line pump installed. Do these work on hot & cold individually or can one pump have 2 feeds in and 2 out ?

Are they expensive to buy and install?

Anything else I need to know?

Answers depend on what you want pumped. Normally the pumps take in a hot and cold feed and output a hot and cold feed. You can get pumps that just do cold or just do hot but for a gravity system these wouldn't really be applicable.

1) If you want a pump solely for the shower then you should take a separate cold feed to the pump from the cold water storage tank and another separate hot feed from the hot water cylinder. This will prevent taps in other parts of the house effecting the temperature of the water in the shower.

2) The other option is to pump the whole water supply by fitting the pump inline with the existing hot and cold feeds. Note - this will activate the pump whenever a tap is operated anywhere in the house. Depending on your plumbing this could also activate when the toilets are flushed.

As the pumps can be quite noisy if you don't need all the water supply pumped I would go with 1.

I recently got 1 done. I think the pump was about 200 euro and the fitting was 400 euro. Very pleased with the results. Might be cheaper if you put the pump inline with the existing feeds (2) as there is probably less plumbing. Be sure you have a large enough hot water cylinder otherwise you will run out of hot water quickly.

Hi,
We recently had our attic converted and considered adding a pump as sometimes when the cold tank is moved to the eaves, the pressure is reduced. Fortunately ours didnt - the cost of a pump for all taps in the house was quoted at 800 including labour.
The other option you could consider, depending on your layout, is that of adding a pump for say, only the ensuite shower - we had a quote of 200 for that (our ensuite is directly behind the hot press).

Hi,

My gravity fed water supply is also rubbish and I want to install a pump, mainly for the showers. While the simplest solution would be to pump the hot and cold supply to the showers, there are a number of problems. While it would be realively easy to loop the cold feed via a pump, because they come direct from the tank in the attic, the hot feed is currently taken off the main hot feed for the house located somewhere under the floor, thus impossible to find and re-direct. Bringing a new hot feed direct from the hotpress would also involve a lot of work including getting the pipes to the shower and removing tiles etc from the shower itself (and the tiles I have are out of stock so impossible to replace).

Another option would be to install a pumped shower in the ensuite and bathroom, but this runs into problem of getting power to them units, and again having to take down some tiles.

Final solution would be to pump the entire supply for the house. I was thinking that the main hot supply could be looped directly through the pump, while for the cold, all I would need to go through the pump are the two cold feeds coming directly from the tank for the showers. I think this might eliminate the problem of pump coming on when a sink cold tap is turned on, or toilets are flushed. It would also be relatively easy to plumb, compared to the other options at least.

HAs anyone any views on this idea? And also, can anyone recommend the best type of pump to use in this situation, preferrably one that is not too noisy!!

The other thing to watch out for when adding a pump is that you increase the pressure/vibration on all the pipes/joints. The two bad things that can come from this are: knocking pipes (where they have not been secured properly), leaky joints (where they have not been tightened properly to cope with the increased pressure).

I put a pump that I got in [broken link removed] into the hot press that boosts the hot and cold flow on every tap in the house.

Because it came on every time I turned on a tap, I put a switch on it and now I only turn it on when I'm using the shower. I have the power only turned up 2/3 of the way and it's a great job altogether and it makes even less noise that the electric shower in the ensuite does.

Pump cost €250 ish. A plumber put it in for free (through work) but now that I have seen what he did it is really simple to do as it came with push on fittings and all you have to do is cut the hot and cold pipes and put it inline with them with the push in fittings.

I have been having ongoing problems with losing pressure in my system and the plumber has shown me how to push a little lever to return the pressure to the correct level. The pressure drops so low that the system shuts down and I would return to a freezing house because the pressure drops to zero if I run the Heating on a timer during my absence over a week. The plumber thinks there's a leak somewhere but unable to find it.......it's a closed system and there's a tank in the attic but the pump comes on when the toilet is flushed. In fact the pump also comes on at random times when the Heating is off and no taps on or toilets flushed. Any suggestions would be very welcome as this is going on three years.

the water in your taps/toilet is not linked in any way to the water in your closed heating system. The water in your heating just goes round and round via the boiler and the rads to heat your home.

Lee Moore said:

In fact the pump also comes on at random times when the Heating is off and no taps on or toilets flushed. Any suggestions would be very welcome as this is going on three years.

Click to expand...

As above, that particular pump is to pressurise water in your taps / shower and will look something like this. Central heating pumps will be located by the boiler and look like this.

Have this a few years and best thing we ever bought https://www.rvr.ie/collections/packaged-solutions/products/attic-220-ps-unit