Hot Water Cylinder Replacement Folkestone

Hot water cylinder replacement in Folkestone

If your hot water runs out before everyone has showered, the cylinder is nearly always the reason. Not the boiler, not the shower, and usually not anything that a repair will put right.

We supply, fit and repair cylinders of every type across Folkestone, Hythe and the surrounding villages, and we size them around the household using them rather than replacing like for like and hoping.

Vented, unvented or thermal store

Vented cylinders are the traditional copper cylinder fed by a cold water tank in the loft. Simple, reliable and the cheapest to replace. The drawback is pressure, which comes only from the height of that tank, so showers are weak unless pumped.

Unvented cylinders take water straight off the mains and deliver it at mains pressure to every outlet in the house. Far better showers, no loft tank, no pump. They need a decent incoming mains flow rate to be worth fitting and they carry a legal annual servicing requirement. Full detail on our unvented cylinder page.

Thermal stores work the other way round, holding heated water that warms your mains water through a coil as it passes. Useful in particular situations, especially alongside heat pumps or solid fuel.

Sizing, which is where most of the problem lives

Undersizing is comfortably the most common fault we find, and it is not really a fault at all. It is a cylinder that was correctly sized for a house that no longer exists.

As a rough guide, one bathroom and up to two people suits around 120 litres. Two bathrooms or a family of four wants 180 to 210 litres. Larger households need 250 litres or more.

So if your cylinder went in when the house had two occupants and one bathroom, and there are now four of you and an en-suite that was added in 2015, no repair changes the outcome. You need a bigger cylinder, and everything else is money spent avoiding that conclusion.

This comes up constantly in the larger detached properties around Saltwood and Hawkinge, and in the Victorian houses along the Folkestone Leas and up the hill in Sandgate that have had bathrooms added over the years without anyone revisiting the cylinder.

See when to replace a hot water cylinder.

Recovery time matters as much as volume

Volume is only half the picture. How quickly the cylinder reheats decides whether the second person waits twenty minutes or two hours.

Recovery depends on the coil, the boiler output and how scaled the cylinder is. A large old cylinder with a furred coil can genuinely perform worse than a smaller modern one, which is why swapping like for like sometimes disappoints people who expected an improvement.

Hard water and what it does in here

The supply across Folkestone and Hythe is hard, and the chalk valley properties around Elham and Lyminge are harder still.

Scale coats the coil and the immersion element, and once it does, heat transfer drops away. The cylinder takes longer to recover, the boiler runs longer to achieve less, and the running cost climbs quietly. Banging or knocking as the cylinder heats is scale on the coil telling you about it.

Immersion heaters

An immersion is an electric element inside the cylinder, working either as the main heat source or as backup for when the boiler is down.

Most cylinders have two. An upper element for a quick partial heat and a lower one for a full tank. When the lower element fails you still get hot water, but only from the top third of the cylinder, and that is precisely the "runs out after one shower" complaint people describe. It gets blamed on the boiler far more often than it should be.

Replacement usually takes about an hour, though a heavily scaled element in an older cylinder can be seized solidly in place, and occasionally the cylinder is not worth the effort of freeing it.

If an immersion repeatedly trips your electrics, the element has failed and is leaking to earth. Please stop resetting it and call us.

Cylinder thermostats

Set to 60 degrees. Lower and you risk bacterial growth in stored water. Higher and you waste energy and scale the cylinder faster.

A failed cylinder thermostat gives you one of two symptoms: lukewarm water that never gets properly hot, or a boiler that never seems to switch off. It is an inexpensive part and it is worth checking before anyone talks to you about a new cylinder.

"He explains all the options, pricing etc and doesn't just go straight for the usual 'Mmm, you're going to need a new one of those' line but instead will try and repair what you've got if he can."

Tim Hack, Google review

Cold water tanks

If you are on a vented system, the loft tank is part of the same job and worth dealing with at the same time.

Tanks need a lid, insulation and a screened overflow. Older uncovered tanks collect dust, insects and worse, and perished insulation is a burst risk in the exposed lofts up at Capel-le-Ferne and across the bungalows on Romney Marsh at Dymchurch. See preventing frozen pipes in cold weather.

Should you convert to unvented instead

Often worth considering, particularly if weak showers are part of what prompted the call.

An unvented cylinder gives mains pressure at every outlet and removes the loft tank entirely. It is a bigger job, it needs a G3 qualified installer by law, and it only works if your incoming mains flow rate is up to it.

We flow test before quoting rather than after, and if the supply is not there we will say so, because no cylinder compensates for an inadequate supply pipe. Where that is the case, replacing the incoming main is sometimes the real answer. See what causes low water pressure at home and shower installation and pumps.

"We've used this company several times and they've been fantastic. They're incredibly responsive and always take the time to explain different options, making sure we understand what's best for our home and budget."

Max Rowe, Google review

What the job involves

A straight cylinder swap is typically a day, with the water off for part of it. Conversions from vented to unvented take longer because of the discharge pipework, the pressure reducing valve and Building Control notification.

Either way we tell you which day and how long the water will be off before we book it, rather than leaving you to find out on the morning.

Related work

If you have no hot water at all rather than not enough, start with hot water repairs, since the fault may not be the cylinder. For boiler side problems see boiler repair, and if you are replacing the boiler at the same time, boiler installation is the sensible moment to reconsider the whole hot water setup.

Off grid properties running oil or LPG are covered on our oil and LPG page.

For getting more from your system generally, see how to improve hot water reliability.

Where we work

Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate, Seabrook, Saltwood, Hawkinge, Capel-le-Ferne, Lympne, Lyminge, Elham, Sellindge, Dymchurch, New Romney, Dover and Ashford.

Common questions

How long should a cylinder last? A copper vented cylinder often runs 20 to 25 years. Hard water and a scaled coil shorten that considerably.

My hot water runs out after one shower. Is the boiler failing? Unlikely. That pattern points at a failed lower immersion element or a cylinder too small for the household.

Can you fit a bigger cylinder in the same space? Often yes, since modern cylinders are better insulated and the footprint has not changed much. We measure before quoting.

Is a foam lagged cylinder worth it over a jacket? Yes. Factory foam insulation loses far less heat than an old jacket, and the saving shows on the bill.

Do I need to be there for the whole day? No, but we will need access at the start and to demonstrate the system at the end.

Call +44 7915 255984 for a hot water cylinder quote in Folkestone.