Re: Home and garden projects
 

Doesn’t the municipal water supply arrive at your house under pressure? You would think a pump would be unnecessary. In the US water pressure from the utility is usually 50psi and many times higher and requires pressure reducer at connection point. When I ran our water line from meter the utility required a reducer set to 50 psi. At our first house we had a well with one pump that was outside in a small pump house.

Re: Home and garden projects
 

No idea, tbh. My sister also has a shower pump. It seems to be a thing, but my knowledge on the subject is pretty much zero.

Re: Home and garden projects
 

I vaguely recall something about showers having pumps and that those hose things that simply fit on the bath taps to provide a "shower" don't have that much power although they are serviceable as a shower.

Re: Home and garden projects
 

Until recently the way British houses are plumbed, is that mains cold water feeds a tap (faucet) in the kitchen, but then feeds only an unpressured cistern (tank) in the attic, and the water supply to the rest of the house, certainly the hot water, and I think most of the cold, is only under gravity pressure, which means the head of an upstairs shower might have as little as 3-4ft of head pressure from the top of the water in the cistern to the shower head. .... I don't know when things changed but relatively recently "US style plumbing", with everything under mains pressure, has been allowed.

Re: Home and garden projects
 

That's similar to what I've heard, though I thought it was only the hot water side that was 'disconnected' from the 'mains' pressure by a cistern. My old experience of UK was that showers were always hopeless, because the hot side was super-low pressure. If you were lucky enough to 'dial in' a well-balanced (hot/cold mix) shower, if anyone in the house turned on any other tap - or God forbid flushed a toilet - your shower would either freeze you your burn you, depending on circumstances. So hot water pumps came into vogue (after I left in 83) and somewhat improved the situation. More recently, the 'hot' side has been allowed to be connected to cold side (pressure-wise), and finally a decent shower is a possibility. I forget now WHY the UK always wanted to disconnect the hot side from the cold side - reverse feed of hot water back into the 'clean' cold side perhaps?

Re: Home and garden projects
 

From a plumbing standpoint treating the early system as a “well” and using a shallow well pump with built in storage tank could be the way to go. One pump with tank of proper size on ground floor should work fine with plenty of pressure for whole house.

Re: Home and garden projects
 

I wonder if someone can help with an electrical mystery?

Every day for the last week our main circuit breaker has tripped, knocking out our power completely.

I am wondering if the circuit breaker is faulty, or, knowing that the block's cabling from the main (3 phase) box to all the apartments is due to be replaced next year, that there is a fault in the house supply.

However, today, just before resetting the circuit breaker I noticed a light on the front of our internal fuse box, and the box was buzzing (it often does this) - even when the power was off!

We do have a separate night meter but nothing seems connected to it - the meter hasn't made a single turn in the 4 years we have been here.

Any ideas?

Photo of internal fuse box, with light showing

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/british...7d015d82fa.jpg

Re: Home and garden projects
 

Is the main the only breaker that trips? Any power drain large enough to trip a main breaker should cause a secondary breaker to trip. Is the main breaker in question serving only your apartment and not the whole building? I would be careful just resetting it. If it’s not a faulty main breaker enough current to trip it could easily start a fire. In the US the main breaker is in the home’s primary fuse box directly connected to buss bars which connect to the secondary breakers. If the main breaker is more remote the wires connecting to breaker box could be shorting out intermittently and causing a main breaker to trip. In any case it needs to be looked at asap.

Re: Home and garden projects
 

Thank you. Yes, only the main breaker trips, never the secondaries.

First thing tomorrow, I shall call an electrician.

Re: Home and garden projects
 

My apologies - I forgot to answer your second question!

The breaker and associated supply is only for our apartment, no others.

Re: Home and garden projects
 

Let me know what you find out about the problem. I am not an electrician but wired my own house with detached garage a few years ago. In Tennessee you are allowed to do that and have it inspected by a state inspector before the power company connects to power.

Re: Home and garden projects
 

I shall - & thank you again!

Re: Home and garden projects
 

I would dispute that assertion - it is common for the sum of the nominal value of the individual breakers to exceed the nominal value of the main breaker by a considerable margin. Our main breaker is 200A ("200A service") and our individual breakers include "high power" breakers for the AC x 2, stove (cooker), dryer, and well pump, totalling 130A, plus a further 6 x 15A circuits and 11 x 20A circuits, so the sum of the individual breaker values is 440A, more than twice the nominal value of the main breaker. So it is certainly possible to trip the main breaker without ever tripping any of the circuit breakers. FWIW the same is true at the individual circuit level, where several outlets are linked to each 15A breaker, and each outlet can be used to draw 15A, so it is perfectly possible to trip the individual circuit breaker without exceeding the power rating for any one outlet.

So, to Finknottle's question, we need to know what high power appliances he has and uses - which I assume in an apartment/ condo, would include stove, electric heating, water heater, and perhaps a dryer. I could imagine in an apartment/ condo, that the stove plus two other appliances could trip the main breaker (I'm guessing 100A service :unsure:), or two appliances plus several other circuits in use. Notably a microwave is a remarkably high power draw that can push a breaker over it's power rating and cut off power.

Re: Home and garden projects
 

That would be especially likely if some new device was recently added like an electric heater.

Re: Home and garden projects
 

That's what I'm thinking - that something new or seasonal is pushing power consumption over the limit for the main breaker. It could also be something new with relatively steady, year-round usage, such as a larger fridge, that got added earlier in the year, but then seasonal usage of the heating system (not new) started causing the problem when winter came.