This week we are working in Dorking, Surrey. Our customer has what was probably once a gate house, in a beautiful part of the country, adjacent to National Trust land.
White house in Dorking, Surrey.
Living in the country has its benefits, but services one takes for granted in a built up area are often not provided, such as mains drainage and a Natural Gas supply. This property has neither (in common with mine!) but unfortunately it also has a poor water supply. Sited nearly half a mile from the nearest main, the house is fed from a long pipe that during peak times reverts to around 5 litres per minute.
Excavating a new pipe had been suggested at a huge cost, but the property is up a significant hill and apparently a distant neighbour who elected to take this option found that they only saw a very small improvement for what was a significant investment.
We suggested installing a Mainsboost Plus, which is an accumulator system connected to a WRAS approved pump. The accumulator stores around 220 litres of water in a 450 litre vessel; the remainder is (compressed) air. The specially designed and approved pump lifts no more than 12 litres per minute from the water main and pushes it into the accumulator, building up the compressed air charge. The pump only runs occasionally because the accumulator responds to most of the demand off line.
Over the years we have fitted a significant number of accumulators, and pumped accumulators, and the solutions, if specified correctly, work extremely well.
The alternative to this modern system is the old ‘break tank’ solution. This is where a large open water cistern is installed, with something resembling a shower pump connected to it. Every time a tap is opened, the shower pump lifts the water out of the break tank and pumps it to the outlet. This type of solution has a number of drawbacks;
– the pump is fast revolving because it has to be able to move about 30 litres of water per minute, this makes it noisy
– in a power cut there’s no water
– the storage tank contains stagnant water open to the atmosphere, so it should be carefully managed (which could mean a chlorination regime).
In the case of our customer, they chose our Mainsboost Plus unit in preference to the break tank recommended by some contractors, and built a purpose built small plant room, attached to the house.
Electrics ready for the accumulator to be fitted, it is a tight fit
We assisted with the sizing of the enclosure, and once it was built (to an excellent standard by the customer’s own contractor), we firstly connected up the electrics in a conduit system, and fitted an electric tube heater for frost protection.
The water boosting system was then installed inside the new enclosure, and we also took the opportunity to connect the icemaker up to the water supply in a fridge freezer on the reverse wall. The job was completed in just under two days.
Setting up air precharge in accumulator to match water supply parameters
Our customer, Kate, was clearly delighted to see her bath and shower working so well after two years of her family enduring 30 minute bath fills and weedy showers.
A happy customer!
