In the house, the cold water tanks are in the loft. There are two tanks, joined together by a 28mm pipe. They're fibreglass, which must date them somewhere between the galvanised metal tanks that used to be used (of which there were 4 in the loft, 2 filled with sawdust and chunks of wood, one small header tank and a large one, that I had to cut in half with an angle grinder), and the new plastic ones you get today.
The plan is to get a new 'coffin' type cold water tank, put it up on a stand, and then put two hot water tanks beneath it. The stand can be shared by the central heating header tank too.
So, with the stand built, and the coffin tank ordered, delivered and placed on top, this is where we started the weekend.
Well, not quite. At this point in proceedings, I'd already plumbed in 3 tank fittings for the 3 showers, and worked out where the mains was going to enter the tank. There's also another tank fitting for the house's cold water taps which has a piece of pipe sticking out of it in the above pics.
You can see the central heating header tank was perched on top of the rearmost cold water tank.
I started to remove the tanks at this point because they were getting in the way:
You might be able to see that at this point I've plumbed the mains feed in a little more permanently, and made some more pipe runs coming out of the cold water tank. At this point, all I could see coming from the cold water tank was one 15mm feed, and I was wondering why that was, and how it could possibly be feeding the hot water tank below. I soon found out that there was a 28mm pipe hidden behind the rear tank that was also in play. Obviously I didn't have any 28mm pipe or fittings, so that was fun explaining to the family about no hot water for the night, and the following morning.
I also realised that I'd pushed the coffin tank back too far, and now the header tank wouldn't fit. I solved this by spanning from one roof strut to a purlin and putting the tank up there.
This is the cold water system plumbed in. It's feeding the existing hot water tank at the moment, and I've not completed the overflow plumbing, or insulated the pipes or tank (apart from sitting it on a sheet of 50mm celotex).
These are the old cold water tanks that our now surplus to requirements:
The plan is to get a new 'coffin' type cold water tank, put it up on a stand, and then put two hot water tanks beneath it. The stand can be shared by the central heating header tank too.
So, with the stand built, and the coffin tank ordered, delivered and placed on top, this is where we started the weekend.
Well, not quite. At this point in proceedings, I'd already plumbed in 3 tank fittings for the 3 showers, and worked out where the mains was going to enter the tank. There's also another tank fitting for the house's cold water taps which has a piece of pipe sticking out of it in the above pics.
You can see the central heating header tank was perched on top of the rearmost cold water tank.
I started to remove the tanks at this point because they were getting in the way:
You might be able to see that at this point I've plumbed the mains feed in a little more permanently, and made some more pipe runs coming out of the cold water tank. At this point, all I could see coming from the cold water tank was one 15mm feed, and I was wondering why that was, and how it could possibly be feeding the hot water tank below. I soon found out that there was a 28mm pipe hidden behind the rear tank that was also in play. Obviously I didn't have any 28mm pipe or fittings, so that was fun explaining to the family about no hot water for the night, and the following morning.
I also realised that I'd pushed the coffin tank back too far, and now the header tank wouldn't fit. I solved this by spanning from one roof strut to a purlin and putting the tank up there.
This is the cold water system plumbed in. It's feeding the existing hot water tank at the moment, and I've not completed the overflow plumbing, or insulated the pipes or tank (apart from sitting it on a sheet of 50mm celotex).
These are the old cold water tanks that our now surplus to requirements:
