Finding a leak from my shower

I've been trying to find where the water's getting out of my shower cubicle. Access is poor, I have a little gap up the side and I can see the underside of the tray, but it's too tight for me to actually reach in there.

The problem is that water drips from somewhere near the wall, it's dripping through the floorboards and wetting the plaster of the ceiling below. It doesn't do it every time, and I can't figure out what makes the difference. There are no cracks in the tray, and it doesn't look like the water is escaping either from the pipes, the fittings fittings or the drainags system. This really only leaves the tiles, the grout and the silicone sealant. The lowest two rows of tiles above where I believe it's coming from were loose, so I took them off. Sure enough the wall behind was wet, so I dried off and re-stuck the tiles, re-grouted and applied silicone along the egde of the tray to make sure.

All seemed to be well. No more drips. Until today. The lady of the house had a big shower (why does it take so long to wash hair?) and there's a proper little stream coming down into the kitchen. It seems to be coming from the same place, but my new grouting and sealing looks fine. The adjacent bit of wall is not pristine, there are hairline cracks in some of the grouting, but it doesn't look bad enough to allow that much water through.

So how invisible can a gap be and still let water out? I really don't want to re-grout the whole damn thing. Also, and tips for pinpointing the leak would be appreciated (I'm thinking fluorescent dye or something).

TIA

John

Reply to
aboleth
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Two possibilities come to mind.

Some years ago I fabricated a tank by welding polyproylene sheet. To leak test the seams, a spark gun was used. Metal foil was placed on one side of the seam and a HV probe was waved along the other side. The slightest fault allowed a spark to pass through. Obviously, the current was very low. You may be able to use a car ignition coil for this sort of use and rely on the house earth instead of foil. If you wet the walls first then dry before testing, any water in the cracks should show up better.

The other possibility is a dye penetrant. Such things are available on the market and I've used them on steel vessels with success. However, you may be able to make a DIY version. Get something like fountain pen ink and thoroughly soak the walls. After a few minutes, wash it off quickly. This should leave traces only in the cracks. Dry the walls and paint thinly with something like flour in water. As this dries, the ink will wick out of the crack and show on the white paste. Of course, the grouting may be sufficiently porous that every line shows so masking the leaks. You may also end up with nice blue grouting so try a spare bit first.

Good luck

John

Reply to
John

If you can see a crack in the grouting you can bet water can get through. Try directing the shower spray onto it with someone weatching from below and wait for the shouts of alarm as water comes through!

Reply to
John Stumbles

Do some tests.....

Run the shower with the showerhead low in the tray (i.e. filling the tray only - nothing on the walls). Leave it for a while... Does this cause the leak?

Now run it over the tray/wall join - try the different sides one after another, each for several minutes.

Now run over the walls etc. etc.

You might be able to work out where the fault lies?

You could also try watching you missus have a shower, to see if she does anything different to you.. :-)

Reply to
Andrew Baker

Thanks for the replies. I got the hosepipe in and did some carefully directed spraying. The problem was partly that it there's a massive lag in the system so I had to be very patient, not my strong suit.

Turned out that some hairline cracks in the grout were letting water through, as expected. Going to scrape out any areas that look even slightly dodgy and regrout.

Cheers,

John

Reply to
aboleth

I have a nasty way of sealing tiles to china..I uses a bead of silicone first, then tile and grout over it.

Looks better than silicone alone, and won't let water through even if it does crack.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

If for some reason this fails to produce the desired shouts of alarm, just direct the showerhead straight at them. Always works :)

NT

Reply to
meow2222

If for some reason this fails to produce the desired shouts of alarm, just direct the showerhead straight at them. Always works :)

They may then come and do you a great favour by enuring youre no longer worried about the leak.

NT

Reply to
meow2222

Too late, I've used grout! It turned out that there was a big crack all the way down the corner, where the plasterboard side had settled away from the brick wall slightly. I guess it's likely to happen again as a result of further small movements. It had been covered with silicone, but as you say, grout looks much nicer. I'll keep an eye on it!

Reply to
aboleth

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