Electric showers fault codes by brand
Find your manufacturer below, then your fault. One thing to know before you start: an electric shower has no plug. The pull cord or the wall switch is the only way you can turn it off.
Brands
Pick your manufacturer to see every code we cover.
Most looked-up electric shower codes
Across every brand in this category.
- Shower runs coldAll brandsWater flows but never heats. On an electric shower this is nearly always the supply, the flow through it, or an element that has stopped working.Get it checked
- Shower keeps tripping the electricsAll brandsA shower that trips the breaker or RCD is reporting a real electrical fault. Do not keep resetting it to get one more shower out of it.Stop — call an engineer
- Shower completely deadAll brandsNo neon, no water, nothing when you pull the cord. On an electric shower a total dead is almost always the supply rather than the appliance.Get it checked
- AMiraFlashing red on the Status light. Mira group three water-supply problems under this one code: no supply, low pressure, or a blockage somewhere in the outlet.Get it checked
- LPBristanTwo letters that look like an abbreviation for low pressure. On a Joy Care, Bristan file six different causes under them, including a tripped cut-out.Get it checked
- Thermal cut-out has operatedAll brandsThe safety device has taken the elements out of circuit. Whether you can reset it yourself depends entirely on the brand, and the answers differ.Get it checked
- E1BristanThe code where Bristan contradict themselves. On a Glee it is a failed thermistor and a phone call; on a Joy Care, hot water left in the unit or a blockage you clear yourself.Get it checked
- Water suddenly scaldingAll brandsAn electric shower that runs too hot is usually short of flow rather than making too much heat. The exception is a thermostatic model, which should not do this at all.Get it checked
- Low pressure indicator litTritonA named Triton lamp with one meaning: pressure fell below what the shower needs, so it cut power to the elements and left the water running.Usually simple to fix
- Burning smell from the shower or pull cordAll brandsHot plastic, scorching or discoloured fittings on a shower circuit is an overheating connection. Switch the circuit off at the consumer unit and leave it off.Stop — call an engineer
- DMiraFlashing red and yellow. The outlet thermistor has seen a temperature above what Mira allow, and the shower has stopped rather than deliver it.Get it checked
- Water leaking from the shower unitAll brandsWater escaping from the casing rather than the head puts mains water inside a live appliance. Manufacturers say stop using it, and that is the right answer.Get it checked
- Abnormal safety cut-out operatedTritonTriton’s thermal cut-out is a one-shot device. It cannot be reset, and their own instruction is that an engineer replaces it after the fault is repaired.Get it checked
- MMiraFlashing white. Not a breakdown — the shower was switched off at the cord before it finished its shutdown, and it will not restart properly until it settles.Usually simple to fix
- Water too COLDRedringRedring answer this with eight checks in a deliberate order, and the seventh is the one nobody guesses: run the shower cold to reset the cut-out.Get it checked
- E3BristanA Joy Care code about water arriving. Two of Bristan’s four causes are things you can check yourself in a few minutes and cost nothing.Get it checked
- Pressure relief device has burstAll brandsWater from the small tube under the shower means a one-shot safety part has ruptured. Replacing it without finding the blockage just bursts the next one.Get it checked
- LMiraStatus light off entirely, with Start/Stop off. Mira call this an electrical fault and the action is to check power to the shower.Get it checked
- E2BristanA Joy Care code covering two component faults: an inlet or outlet thermistor, or the temperature control dial. Neither is an owner repair.Get it checked
- Fitting a higher kW showerAll brandsA bigger shower is not a like-for-like swap. The cable and the breaker decide what you can fit, and that also decides whether the job is notifiable.Usually simple to fix
Symptoms
No code on the display? Start from what it is doing.
Electric shower has no pressure or a weak flow
A weak electric shower is usually a blocked head, a half-shut valve or a marginal mains, and sometimes the shower deliberately throttling itself to stay hot. The fix depends on which.Electric shower leaking from the unit
Where the water is coming from decides everything: a hose or head is a fitting, a tube under the unit is a safety device that has done its job, and the casing is a stop-using-it.Electric shower not hot enough
A shower that has gone lukewarm rather than cold is usually obeying arithmetic rather than failing, and the arithmetic changes with the season.Electric shower not working
An electric shower fails in five distinguishable ways, and two questions — is the neon lit, is water flowing — tell you which one you have before anyone opens anything.Immersion heater not working
An immersion heater is an electric element in a tank with a thermostat and a one-shot safety cut-out, and which of those three has stopped decides everything.
How electric showers fault codes work
An electric shower is not the same appliance as a digital or mixer shower, and getting that distinction right is most of the diagnosis. An electric shower takes cold mains water only and heats it as it passes over an element, with 7.5 to 10.5 kW of its own on a dedicated circuit. A digital shower heats nothing — it blends existing hot and cold under electronic control. This category is the first kind. If your shower has a control unit fed from a fused spur and gets its heat from your boiler or cylinder, its faults are about data cables and flow rates rather than elements, and none of the pages here apply.
Start with the physics, because it makes almost every fault in this category read backwards from what people expect. The unit puts a fixed amount of heat into whatever water passes through it. So the temperature you get is set by how fast the water is moving, not by a thermostat picking a target. Slow the flow and the water gets hotter; speed it up and it gets cooler. That is why a scaled showerhead makes a shower run too hot rather than too cold, why the temperature control on most of these is really a flow valve, and why the answer every manufacturer gives to "water too hot" is about cleaning things rather than about heat.
Only two of the four brands here publish anything you could call a code, and they do it in very different ways. Mira publish thirteen, lettered A to M, and none of them appears on a screen — they are encoded in the colour and rhythm of two lights, and reading one takes two observations rather than one. Bristan display five characters on a small indicator, and they are not consistent across their own range: E1 on a Glee is a failed sensor they want you to phone about, while on a Joy Care its first published cause is a blockage they tell you to clean yourself. Triton, the biggest-selling brand in the country, publish no codes at all — a numbered fault-finding matrix and three named indicator lamps. Redring publish plain questions and answers, split into what the owner should check and what the qualified service person should check.
The single most useful thing to know across all of them is that "the thermal cut-out has gone" means three different things. Triton's is not resettable — it is a one-shot part and their own instruction is that an engineer replaces it after the underlying fault is repaired. Redring's resets when you run cold water through the shower. Bristan's clears after five minutes switched off. Read the wrong brand's advice and you will either scrap a repairable shower or pay for a call-out that a five-minute wait would have avoided.
On safety, two things are specific to this appliance. There is no plug, so isolation means the ceiling pull cord or a wall switch — and if a fault involves the supply rather than the shower, the consumer unit is where it stops. And the load is the largest single one in a normal house: a 9.5 kW unit draws around 40 amps continuously. That is why a burning smell or scorched fittings on a shower circuit is treated here as urgent rather than as an inconvenience, and why a shower that repeatedly trips the RCD is not something to keep resetting to get one more wash.
The legal position, accurately, because it is routinely overstated. A bathroom is a special location under Approved Document P, and any addition or alteration to a circuit within the zone around the bath or shower is notifiable, as is installing a new circuit. But swapping an electric shower for another one on the existing circuit is a replacement, and replacements are not notifiable — the Welsh Approved Document P names cookers and electric showers specifically. So nobody needs telling that it is illegal to change their own shower, because it is not. What is worth telling them is that the moment the cable or the breaker has to change, the job becomes notifiable work normally done by an electrician registered with a competent person scheme, and that is the half of the answer that decides what it costs.