If you want to have a piece of mind from low water pressures while taking a bath, then installing a power shower is the best option you have. One hassle-free way is to call a professional plumber for this job, let him select the best shower available, and get the job done with satisfaction but while parting with some good cash. The other option, as always, is to learn the basics and do it yourself. This article details some of the basics of power showers so you can get a good grasp of how the system works.

Typical power showers come with a mixing valve that blends cold and hot water from the gravity fed lines and a built-in pump pushes up water so that you will get good water pressure at the shower head. So first thing to note is that power showers require both a hot water and a cold water supply line so that you can enjoy your bath in all weathers. Ideally, you should connect the lines using gate valves so that you won't need to open up the whole system in case of a shower maintenance job. One could have both a manual power shower and a thermostat power shower; those with a thermostat would keep the temperature constant even if the supply feeds water to another line in your house. Once you have installed the shower correctly, the pump will start automatically whenever you open the shower.

Now there are three types of power shower systems currently available in the market. The first one is the typical power shower we discussed earlier, the one that has a built-in pump and mixer in a single unit. The mixing valve combines cold and hot water to bring water to the required temperature, while the pump pushes this water towards the shower.

The second type of power shower comes with a single impeller pump, which is positioned between the shower head and the mixer. You won't find many of these nowadays primarily because of their lack of adaptability and also because a better option comes at only a slightly higher price. Anyway, in these systems, cold and hot water lines feed the mixer, from where water moves upwards towards the shower head. The single impeller pump then pushes water to the shower head, but this pump has to be installed close to the head for optimum performance. And since the pump has to be situated between the mixer and the shower head, the ideal place for it is the loft. But in extremely cold weathers, it can result in frozen water inside the lofts, and since the pump needs free air flow, the loft cannot be insulated.

The double-impeller pump, the single most versatile system, was made to bypass this difficulty. The cold and hot water lines separately come into the pump, from where water is pushed with pressure towards the mixer separately in both lines. The mixer combines hot and cold water to get the required temperature and a single line then goes to the shower head. Since hot and cold water is pushed upwards, the resulting pressure at the shower brings a fast water flow.

Whatever power shower you choose, it'll require electricity to power the pumps. Also, it can't work with combination boilers as it requires the availability of separate hot and cold water pipes. One problem, though, is that they would cause strong vibration inside the walls. So make sure that you have fitted the surrounding tiles smoothly in order to avoid damage to them.