Mains or Stored fed Systems

Mains.

When all cold water in high pressure system, comes directly from a main supply, turning off the cold water stop tap will almost immediately, stop these taps running. This cold water (mains) is also used to ‘power’ your hot water. The word ‘power’ means that its the pressure of the cold water that pushes the hot water out of your taps. Therefore, turning off the main stop isolates the pressure from the hot water, resulting in no hot water from the taps. You might still have a vessel where the hot water is stored but without the cold water mains pressure to push hot water around, it can’t reach the taps and just stays in this hot water cylinder. An N9 Plumber knows about this system. The majority of homes have a mixture of stored and mains fed water i.e. cold water will be mains fed to the kitchen then delivered from storage tanks to the bathroom, whilst all the hot water will be from a stored supply. There are many advantages to a high pressure system but the important one is that isolating the mains stop tap will turn off all hot and cold water straight away. A disadvantage is that a high volume of water can leak out if you cant find your mains stop tap.

Stored.

This system has the cold water mains coming into your house being used to fill large storage tank high as possible, usually in a loft. The water that coming from the taps is fed from the storage tanks, with the result that switching off the mains cold water does not stop water coming out of your taps straight away. In fact, if the tanks are big it can take 20-30 minutes for them to empty and for the flow from your taps to stop. So if your home does not use stored water you need to know where the valves are that will turn this water off immediately. N9 Plumbers know this system.



“