Understanding Your Water Pressure

Understanding your water pressure and the importance of this when choosing your taps and showers

It is important that you understand the hot water system in your dwelling prior to selecting your products.

All products in this brochure are marked with a pressure rating (BAR pressure) min 0.5 bar and it is important that your hot and cold water system can produce the required level of pressure in order to make the items function correctly.

Please see below the diagrams of the typical hot and cold water systems in UK properties, along with an indication of the pressure rating of the products you can use with each system.

Please be aware this is a guide only and for further information you should contact a qualified installer.

Gravity

Hot Water System

Low Pressure Gravity systems generally comprises of a tank in the loft of a building which feeds a hot water copper cylinder below.

The Items available to choose from that work with this system are recommended to have a bar pressure that is;

≤ 0.2 Bar (for Taps and Showers on the same floor as the hot water cylinder)

≤ 0.5 Bar (for Taps and Showers on a floor below as the hot water cylinder).

A combination boiler is fed by mains cold water and heats the hot water on demand. There are no storage tanks or shower pumps in this system.

The Items available to choose from that work with this system are recommended to have a bar pressure that is;

≤ 1.5 Bar.

A high pressure mains system comprises of an unvented cylinder with no header tank in the roof. In this system both the hot and cold water are supplied at mains pressure.

The Items available to choose from that work with this system are recommended to have a bar pressure that is;

≤ 3.0 Bar.

A gravity system with a pump is like a low pressure gravity system with a header tank and a copper cylinder, except that there is a pump boosting the pressure of the hot and cold water which operates in demand and converts this system to high pressure.

The Items available to choose from that work with this system are recommended to have a bar pressure that is;

≤ 3.0 Bar.