Renovating your home is one of the more stressful endeavours you can undertake wholesale – and arguably only second in stress levels to the act of moving house itself. This is in no small part due to the sheer volume of decisions that need to be made at every step, from major decisions about your kitchen units or larger furnishings to the smaller details. In between all of this, there is the bathroom.
The bathroom is quite easily forgotten about when you get swept up in design ideas for bedrooms and living spaces, but it should be one of the first places you think to renovate. This is not only a place for morning ablutions nor cleanliness, but also a space for relaxation and reflection – and you deserve the best possible version of that space. Choosing the right shower unit is vital to this process, and can be more complex than it first seems. What are the key types of shower, and why might you choose them for your own renovation?
Electric Showers
Electric showers are shower units with their own heating element, which are fed by your cold water supply. These can come in a variety of sizes, forms and prices, but are a great inexpensive option if only to reduce plumbing costs when renovating.
Electric showers are typically cheaper to run than other forms of shower. This is because these showers only heat the water that you use, making for a much more energy- and water-efficient average shower.
Mixer Showers
Mixer showers are the type of shower with which most people will be familiar. These are fed by both your cold water supply and your boiler, allowing you to mix the flow of each to find the perfect shower temperature. These are much quicker to get to temperature than many other types of shower unit, and can also boast higher pressures on account of combining the flow from two sources. If your boiler is efficient enough, you can also benefit from lower heating costs thanks to the relative cheapness of gas to electricity.
However, there are compliance differences from unit to unit to be aware of, in that a given mixer shower unit needs to be compatible with your central heating system. Older conventional boiler systems with hot and cold water tanks are ‘gravity-fed’, while combi boiler systems are much higher-pressure.
Power Showers
Power showers are not showers that utilise unusually strong household water pressure; indeed, they are exactly the solution for houses with the opposite problem, in the form of low water pressure. They work in a similar fashion to mixer showers, utilising both hot and cold water supplies to provide user-tweaked temperatures.
The difference is that power showers use a pump to increase the flow rate, making for a better shower experience. Bear in mind, though, that these can only work with low-pressure water supplies, such as tank-based heating systems.