Whirlpool bath supply

[BR36]

We’re doing a bathroom refurb and wife fancies a whirlpool bath. Does it need a dedicated supply from the CU? There’s a 16A MCB supply to an immersion heater (that we don’t use), is it possible to add a selector switch in the airing cupboard to use the same supply for the bath?

[Someone-Else]

Depends how much current the bath will require, also does it have RCD protection?

English: What does the blurb for the whirlpool bath say the bath needs? Has your consumers unit got anything with RCD printed on it? (Picture might help if you are not sure)

[BR36]

Thanks for your reply. Sorry for the lack of info. CU is split load with RCD protection. I’ve not got the bath yet so will have to do some digging on the website to see what load the pump is. We never use the immersion but don’t really want to tempt fate by taking its supply away on a permanent basis so was thinking if I can have a manual selector switch in the airing cupboard I could switch supply from the bath pump to the immersion if it was ever necessary. I’ll come back when I get the pump info

[ericmark]

If you use over 16 amp on the immersion supply, worse case is the MCB/RCBO will trip. In summer, I use my immersion heater, in winter no option, can't stop the central heating from heating DHW, I hear people say the immersion cost more, but not so sure, the boiler uses a hot coil so heats whole tank, immersion only heats the top few inches, the boiler also heats the pipe work, and the boiler its self, so there are more losses.

Clearly, for a bath, you need to heat a lot of water, and using gas or oil far cheaper, but I have not used a bath in years, too slow, we have two in the house, one has my wife's bike in it.

Once we had a shower installed, it was rare to have a bath, my big mistake was the first shower in the last house was in the bath, and the glass panels left a hole where the bath was, did not seal at the bottom, so the chimney effect circulated water vapour throughout the bathroom. And this caused mould to form.

So the big thing is how to remove water vapour without making the bathroom cold. A heat recovery unit seems the best option, but we found in mother wet room, the lack of any screens within the room, resulted in the water vapour staying in one area, and no mould formed.

My wife wanted a hot tub in the garden, which I did not fit, as the table, chairs, etc, in the garden not used, so what is the chance she will use a hot tub.