Peter Parry wrote:
On 9 Apr 2005 06:14:04 -0700, (Ellen
Rawlinson) wrote:


I want to be able to run both showers at once (as there
will be six people in the house), and my plumber thinks the only way
to do this is with electric showers.


A cheap combi will give you a twin shower effect on a par with that
achieved by using an aged and incontinent rat in place of the shower
head. Two electric showers (assuming you have a single domestic
supply to the house and need both to operate together and with other
appliances on) may have to be so small that their effect will be even
worse.

A 24kW combi should give you two showers at least as good as the
highest-powered (10.5kW) electric showers. In the depths of winter and
early spring when the incoming water is cold that means you won't get a
very good flow of water at a comfortably hot temperature, so make sure
the bath/shower rooms are warm because otherwise it'll be a miserable
experience showering.

However if the place is for rental then as others have pointed out you
really need to consider what will happen _when_ the boiler breaks down
(they all do at some time or other). A stored water system (conventional
gravity fed, unvented or thermal store) will allow you the option of
electric backup heating for water, though not for space heating. It's
anathema (not to say heresy) to admit it but A Certain Person's
suggestion of 2 combis for redundancy has some merit, though you need a
foolproof way of knowing when one of them has failed otherwise you still
only hear about it when they've both gone and there's no hot water or
heating and you have to call out a heating engineer at emergency
call-out rates. (And you can't rely on tenants telling you that one of
the showers has packed up or there's no heating in certain rooms when
you really do want to know this: ask any landlord - tenants aren't like
that!)