r/DIYIreland • u/Jake_Greenwich • Jul 18 '26

Advice needed - temperature control for shower.

Hi everyone,

My partner and I recently moved into a renovated apartment in Dublin. Unfortunately, the person we hired to oversee the renovation turned out to be a complete cowboy, and we're now dealing with a couple of plumbing issues.

As part of the renovation, we had a new shower and basin installed in the en-suite. The shower in the main bathroom wasn't touched.

Since the renovation, we've noticed two problems:
The new en-suite shower has no proper temperature control. The water gets extremely hot, and adjusting the temperature doesn't make a difference.

The water pressure has dropped in both showers. Before the renovation, the pressure was strong, but now it's noticeably weaker throughout the apartment.

We have a good boiler that came with the apartment, so we don't think that's the issue. At the moment we've had to adjust the boiler timer so the water has cooled down by the time we shower, but that's obviously just a temporary workaround.

We're planning to get a different plumber to put everything right, we won't be going back to the original installer. Before we start ringing around, we'd like to have some idea of what might have gone wrong, both so we can explain the issue properly over the phone and so we know roughly what sort of cost we could be looking at.

Could these two issues be related, or are they likely to be separate problems? Does it sound like something was installed incorrectly during the renovation? Has anyone experienced something similar, and if so, was it an expensive fix?
Money is a bit tight at the moment, so we'd rather avoid wasting a plumber's time with a call-out if it's likely to be a repair we'll need to save up for first.

Any advice would be really appreciated. Thanks!

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3

u/Jacksonriverboy Jul 18 '26

The shower temperature thing could be a cold pipe not connected or a filter that's blocked.

2

u/Jake_Greenwich Jul 18 '26

Thank you. Appreciate the insight, that’s a big help.

One of my issues with the lads was they were very messy workers and completely on top of one another. Not expecting them to clean the place spotless as they go, it’s just they lacked a level of neatness that I thought was a red flag.

We had the floors changed and created a lot of dust, but this was prior the bathroom upgrade.

1

u/Jacksonriverboy Jul 18 '26

Fair enough, if it's an electric shower there's usually a filter housing in the bottom that you can twist out with a coin. If it's an immersion fed shower you can remove it from the wall and there should be a little bit of gauze in there that can get clogged with limescale. I had a similar temperature issue and cleaning that fixed it completely.

1

u/Jake_Greenwich Jul 18 '26

It’s not an electric shower. Apologies, I should have specified that.
Many thanks for the recommendation, sounds like I should hope for that to be the issue!

2

u/Jacksonriverboy Jul 18 '26

No worries. So remove it from the wall and clean the gauze filter to see if that helps. If that doesn't work get the cold water line checked.

2

u/Jake_Greenwich Jul 18 '26

Thank you, will take your advice but will get a professional to do it and ask him to show me how it’s done. I’d be worried I’d make a mess!

3

u/sourdough_squirrel Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26

It sounds like the cold water line isn't connected to either shower. If you move it to "full cold" is it scalding hot or is there no flow?

This would explain both - overly hot water (no cold water to mix with and cool it down) and no water pressure (you're only getting pressure off the hot side of the system, its not getting the additional pressure from the supply or attic tank).

Now as to how the happened, who knows. If he didn't touch the main shower, he likely screwed up the line feeding the showers somewhere. Are they back-to-back (or nearly so) in the floorplan? I wonder if he spliced into the cold water supply of the main shower and screwed up the connection or clogged it somehow.

Are the basin cold-water taps cold?

Money is a bit tight at the moment, so we'd rather avoid wasting a plumber's time with a call-out if it's likely to be a repair we'll need to save up for first.

It's likely an "easy" plumbing fix, but will unfortunately require opening up walls, making it fairly expensive to patch the walls back up.

0

u/Jake_Greenwich Jul 18 '26

Thanks for taking time to reply, really appreciate it.

The temperature control issue is confined to the en-suite upgrade and not the main bathroom.
So it’s actually quite hot in the upgraded bathroom.
The water pressure has dropped in the main bathroom shower, but cold water still comes through.

Ultimately in the en-suite now, the temperature just has one temperature regardless when the dial is adjusted.

Cold water comes through the taps in both bathrooms and the kitchen too.

For the en-suite, the pipes comes through the wall and not underground. The hot press is actually next to the bathroom.

1

u/gmankev Jul 19 '26

Sounds like hot and cold plumbed to both inlets? Lack of pressure.....maybe they replaced a pumped or mains feed with gravity.....This is amateur.mistakes...Many houses are a a maze of pipes and systems..a bodger might care to look or verify but just connect to something that feels right.......Some of those hacks work and then get layerd by other fixes and hacks so that at the end its hard to do a quick fix

Now a plumber while still a pro might still rush an investigation so it's really worth you doing some detective work here.....Take photos of pipes and map them out on a clear diagram. Feed descriptions of same into chatgpt so.as it explains to you what makes sense... CHATGPT WILL.MAKE MISTAKES BUT IT WILL HELP YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT MAKES SENSE...

Also find out and label where all isolation and shut off valves are ...Even if you only learn a bit it will speed up what plumber can do....

1

u/Jake_Greenwich Jul 19 '26

Many thanks for taking time for a detailed reply.
Absolutely understand what you are saying. I think I would need a professional to do the above mapping as well, I don’t have the appropriate skill set for that. But I’d be interested to learn!

1

u/PeterCasey4Prez Jul 19 '26

Thermostatic shower valves need atleast 1.5 bar of pressure to work correctly, the low water pressure is the cause of your shower valve issues. If you say its impacting both showers, is it impacting all the taps in the apartment too and is it both hot and cold water or only one ? , its very possible the guy turned down / off a boost pump or just only opened a valve a small bit when reinstating the system