Gravity fed shower - no good

[kayep]

I have recently moved into a house, the shower is next to useless.

It is gravity fed hot from electric heated tank in roof and pumped cold from rain water tank.


The taps appear to be conventional hot and cold feeding into single pipe to the shower head.


I cannot adjust, always too hot or too cold.


What can I do to improve this?
Will a different shower head help?
The taps washers need replacing; will this help?

I have heard that there may be a device that can be fitted into the cold tap to reduce the pressure to make it equal the hot; does anyone know if these exist and what they are called.

Is there a simpe thermostatic mixer that can cope with unequal hot and cold water pressure?



I hope someone can help

[ozwinner]

The best I can advise for gravity fed hot water is to make the cold the same, we have had a few over the years and they are a pain to get the temp right.
Specially if someone flushes the dunny at the time you are in the shower.

Al :)

[Zed]

go for mains pressure - we had gravity fed - 18psi - whoo hoo!!

nothing else will fix tyour problem - dont @rse about - just do it. (seriously)

[journeyman Mick]

You could improve it by replacing the pressure switch and tank from the pump with an electronic flow switch. This will give you a constant flow of cold water rather than the cycling from high to low and back to high that you get as the pump cycles in and out. They're not cheap though, $100+ and you'll need to get a plumber and sparky in as well. For a few hundred more you could fit a new HWS.

Mick

[Barry_White]

I have a gravity fed hot water tank and when I built the house I knew I would have that problem so I installed a 30 litre cold water gravity feed tank in the roof that is fed from the pressure pump. Problem solved.

This tank only feeds the two showers all other cold water taps are connected to the pressure pump.

You just have to make sure that you don't use watersaver shower heads.