Water Heater / Shower Head Reccomendations? (Max volume)

[tweezer]

Hi,

I'm planning to replace the wall mounted water heater and shower head in my bathroom.  The goal is maximum water volume and pressure. 

 

Some stats on the current setup:

• Upstairs bathroom.
• Current water heater is an older Sharp model.
• Input water volume to the Sharp unit is about 8.5 liters/min (this is from the hose that feeds the heater unit).  That's not great but not too bad.
• Output from the Sharp unit is about 6 liters/min (direct from the heater's output nipple, with the flow dial turned to maximum).
• Shower head with hose output is about 4 liters/min.

 

So I'm losing about 2 liters/minute in the heater, and another 2 liters/minute from the shower head/hose.

 

So my questions are:

• Can anyone recommend a good water heater unit that has high volume throughput (low loss with high output pressure/volume)?
• Are there good shower heads/hoses (larger dia) available that can handle higher volumes from the heater?
• Is there any value in manually drilling out the rubber washers to make the inner diameter hole larger?

 

Appreciate any insight from anyone who might have some experience here.

 

(Interesting note... the sales guy at homepro told me that most water heaters eat about 0.5 liters of water volume.... not sure I believe that.)

Thanks in advance for any advice....

Cheers!

T.

 

Edited April 9, 2018 by tweezer

[Crossy]

The more powerful heaters tend to have higher flow rates, but there will always be some losses in the heater and head.

 

We're not helped by the "low flow" shower heads intended to save water.

 

If the flow from the open pipe is marginal then you need more oomph there. Bigger pipe? Bigger pump?

 

Something like this ought to do the trick https://www.homepro.co.th/product/1068661 but you need to ensure your wiring is up to the task.

 

[sometimewoodworker]

 We are currently missing some important data.
1) what is the power rating on your Sharp heater?
2) what pump do you have?
3) is the pressure and flow delivered to the water heater as high as it can be?
4) do you want a hot shower, a powerful shower or a hot powerful shower (3 options)

FWIW I currently have a 12 year old Sharp 4.5KW unit WH-553D that now can't supply hot enough water in the cold season even with the water flow as low as possible, quite possibly a replacement heater unit (or cleaning the current one)  may be enough but as it's a 4.5KW unit it will never supply hot high flow water in the cold weather.

currently we have a Mitsubishi EP155 pump feeding into ½ pipe which also is restricting the flow available, it has a maximum pressure of 1.9 kg/cm. or 27psi.

To solve these problems in our new house, we have three changes. The first change is to switch to 6000 kW Sharp water heaters (I think they are enough of a power jump) second is to have all of the pipework in 1 inch interval diameter and the third is to select a Water pump which has adjustable pressure from 22psi up to 80psi and 3 m³/h

 

 

I selected Sharp for 2 reasons, the first and for me the most important is that it has a digital setting so I can select a real temperature rather than a vague position on a dial and with 2 people using the shower will probably get moved by both of us. The second is that the current one has worked well for 12 years