No matter where you are in the house, no matter how much air I bleed out of all the taps, my hot water is ALWAYS very slow and full of air.

It puzzles me that the big electric hot water tank, which heats at night and always stays full (from the header tank with float valve) COULD give me a crappy flow all the time. It should not be possible without soimthing being very wrong. That tank holds a lot of water and ought to have good pressure.

The problem is that it takes several hours to fill up a tub with hot water, and a very short amount of time to get that much cold water. I know that the hot is only getting a gravity assist (unlike the cold) but it OUGHT to be a lot faster than this, and with a header tank feeding the hot water tank it ought to be very predictable in flow rate. It isn't.

The hot water comes from a rain tank system (constant pressure pump system, not low flow). Cold water from the tanks and pump goes up into the rafters.

A large black cold water plastic pipe fills the header, which then goes into the hot water tank, and out the bottom edge via copper pipe.

Nothing new or unexpected there. It would have been nice if they had put a few shut off valves around the hot water tank itself (lazy people).


So...

In order to fill the tub I have to run hot water at every hot tap in the house, and capture what comes out in buckets and take it to the tub. This rather spoils the entire idea of having pipes to carry the water to the tub. Grumble

I think that after an hour or so I do get a small increase in flow, but it is still pretty slow. I normally have to resort to boiling water in an electric kettle as well and just pour that into the tub too. I am certain I am wasting a lot of electricity doing all this.

We have a lot of healthy pressure from the pump on the rain water tanks. We have a lot of water available. What we have is very poor flow from the hot water, with a lot of air in the lines.

Bleeding the hot water system does not change this. They seem to just constantly get more air in them. Bleeding the system makes no long term change (not even for an hour).

Why?

There is one possible complication.

This place used to be on a low flow system instead of a pressure pump. I know this because the old rusted out header tank is on a tall tower right next to the water tanks. More than likely they just substituted a pressure pump for the big header and small pump that used to do the job.

The question is, would they have had a special pressure equalizing hot water tank on the old low flow system, and if they did - would just shoving in a new pressure pump screw up how the hot water works?

I really do not understand the whole "pressure equalizing" hot water tank thing as I grew up in a prt of the world where NOBODY uses rain tanks (or has... for a long time).

From the look of things, a lot of the work around here was done by the last long term owners. They cut corners ever where to save money and time (ie, there are no cold water shut offs under the sinks & toilets, etc).

This is driving me buggy.

Eventually I am going to plumb the slightly saline bore (already goes into the house) and use it for our hot water. After all why wasist all that clean drinkable water on clothes and bathing. Besides the salts do nice th8ings for our skin.

I intend on using an instant gas hot water system (probably a REDROCK heater) that can be adjusted for lower pressure systems. When I do that I will be stopping using the nice potable water for showers and baths, and just heat up water form the less potable bore (a bit salty).

Until I get around to all that work putting in the new heater (which isn't easy for us old disabled folk) I would like to know if there is something simple I am missing.

Please help.

Cheers

P.S. there is a small dripping leak where the cold water goes INTO the top of the header which feeds the hot water tank.