Skul Plumbing

A bathroom is one room in the home, apart from the kitchen, that requires the most planning. A well planned small bathroom will not only add significantly to the value of your home, but will also provide an essential luxury: somewhere to relax, wash, feel good and be pampered. As you’re probably working with one of your home’s smallest spaces, utilising every inch is crucial. Your bathroom, whatever size, needs to be highly functional and practical. Avoiding design mistakes at the planning stage will save you unnecessary costs in labour, tiling and sanitary ware in the future. Here’s a short guide for getting the most out of your small bathroom, including help with planning, positioning and purchasing the right suite.

What’s the first step?

When working with a small bathroom area, the most important thing to consider is its quantities and dimensions. As your available space may be limited, you should draw or make a layout of your bathroom, with correct sizing (to scale!) before embarking on your small bathroom project. At this stage, it’s essential that you include in your layout any windows, internal walls, doors (including any door swinging space), existing fixtures and with allowance for adequate entry/exit space.

If you’re starting from scratch, you’ll need to use the dimensions of the room to get an idea of the required sizing of your sanitary ware, and the quantity of wall and floor tiles or material you’ll need to purchase. It might be useful at this stage, as you’re working with a small bathroom space, to experiment by cutting to-scale templates of the sanitary ware and fittings and moving them around to test which variation works best. By doing this, you’ll be able to see if you can make better use of your space and what will actually fit.

If you’re renovating, you will also most certainly be working to a budget. If you’re trying to keep costs at a minimum, you may want to keep the lavatory in its original position and save the expensive task of rerouting the drainage. Other significant fittings may also need to stay in position due to drainage; however, you may want to replace them.  If you desperately desire to move the lavatory, and the drainage can’t be moved, you should consider installing a macerator (Saniflo is a popular option) which will only require limited piping and is also helpful in new or loft bathrooms where there is no pre-existing plumbing in place.

Where can I find products to suit a small bathroom?

There are a variety of space-saving and compact small bathroom products on the market in the UK. Shires, Roca, Manhattan, April Showers, LWCC and Vitra are some major UK suppliers of products such as baths, shower baths, recessed shower enclosures, toilets and cloakroom sinks to suit a smaller bathroom. You can find these (along with their dimensions, to help with your planning) and other products to suit small bathrooms at BathroomTrade.co.uk, a reputable UK online Bathroom Store. You can even choose from a broad range of small bathroom and cloakroom suites to suit your style and budget.

Any other helpful tips?

It’s a good idea to speak to your plumber about your planned layout before you commence work. Your plumber will be able to advise on piping, drains and water pressure. A good plumber will most likely have been inside a number of small bathrooms, like yours, and may have some useful advice for placement of sanitary ware, basins and the lavatory – if you’re looking for inspiration or a bit of help.

In terms of space enhancement, simple additions like mirrors, light colours (tiles and floor), good storage and choosing wall hung sanitary ware can make your bathroom seem larger than it is. If you’re fortunate enough to get it, natural light also does wonders.

A small bathroom can be an asset to your home, and if you have a well-thought plan, get some credible advice and search out quality sanitary ware, you’ll be off to a good start!

Squeeze the most efficiency out of your hot water plumbing system, save water, and save energy with demand pumping, and if appropriate, a tankless water heater.

Homeowners today have an opportunity to substantially reduce the amount of wasted water and energy normally lost when the hot water system is used.  Reducing water usage and saving energy also reduces the amount of green house gases released into the atmosphere and reduces your carbon footprint.

When it comes to modern plumbing systems, we find that they are quite wasteful of both water and energy. The familiar tank type storage water heater we are all used to are less efficient than modern tankless water heaters. 

Tankless Water Heaters, electric and Gas, save energy, but not water!

Upgrading to a tankless water heater will not necessarily save you a lot of money, be it will save energy. One must evaluate the need for a tankless heater on an individual basis.  If you suffer from running out of hot water then the tankless water heater will solve that problem easily.  Another factor would be the type of fuel available.  If your home has access to gas then that is a good thing because gas is the least expensive method of heating water.

Electric tankless water heaters typically are not able to supply enough energy to obtain high flow rates at high temperature rises.  The large models typically require very large gauge wiring and need their own circuit breakers.

Saving Water & Plumbing Layouts

Saving water is another area where modern plumbing layouts could use some improvement. Homes have gotten much larger than they used to be, although total square footage does not tell the whole story. Generally large homes have longer pipes and often larger diameter pipes as well.

In the past a common way to prevent an excessively long wait for hot water was to use a hot water circulating system where hot water was continuously pumped through the hot water plumbing system.  This is hugely wasteful of energy and quite costly to run.

Since once a house has been built, changing the piping layout is usually prohibitively expensive, another method must be utilized to overcome the water wastage resulting from the homeowner needing to purge the cooled off hot water from the pipes in order to obtain hot water at the fixture.  It needs to get hot water to the fixture rapidly without running water wastefully down the drain.

Hot Water Demand Systems

There are a number of hot water demand systems on the market that will provide the homeowner with fast hot water without running any water down the drain. They do so without the need for any changes to the plumbing system.

These systems consist of a electronically controlled pump that is placed under the furthest sink from the water heater, and they use the cold water line as a return for the cooled off hot water in the hot water piping.

When the pump is activated it pumps the water quickly in a loop from the water heater to the fixture, returning the cooled off hot water to the water heater inlet through the cold water line.  When hot water reaches the pump, it shuts off preventing the hot water from getting into the cold water line.  Now when the home owner turns of the hot water fixture he gets instant hot water.

Tankless water heaters take longer to deliver hot water to the fixtures than a tank type storage water heater.  This makes demand hot water pumps very attractive as an accessory for a tankless water heater.

Almost any home will benefit from the installation of a demand hot water system.

For a truly green hot water plumbing system, install a hot water demand system and if applicable for your situation, consider a tankless water heater as well, especially if it is point-of-use.

Electric Water Heaters, How They Work and How to Repair Water Heaters: Electric Water Heaters

Water and Energy Conservation – Hot Water Demand Systems: Saving Water Conservation Products

All about Tankless Water Heaters: Tankless Hot Water Heaters

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/bath-showers-articles/saving-water-and-energy-with-tankless-water-heaters-and-demand-system-pumps-1173663.html