Shower leaking through tiles.........

Dj shaft

Hello,
I have recently bought a house and have a leak from my shower. The builder I bought the house of installed the shower unit and tiled the wall. I installed the shower doors myself. The problem now is I have a leak and reckon I have sourced it back to small holes in the grout on the wall between the tiles?

Is this common to occur and would water seep through these holes?

What should I do? Would another re skim of grout do the job or what do ye recommend?

Cheers
Conor

deckie27

Are you sure? You think the water goes through the tiles into the plasterboard and then leaks onto the ceiling below ?
Did u look under the floor ?

Wishbone Ash

1. Is the leak visible following/during a shower only?

2. Is the leak actually dripping or just a wet patch on the ceiling (if upstairs)?

3. Could you do without the shower for a few days to establish that it's not coming from somewhere else?

311

Try and find out if the builder lined the wall with plywood before he tiled.
The only time I've ever seen a leak on a shower was when the wall was tiled without been covered with waterproof ply first.
The only thing you can do is dismantle everything and rebuild it.

Spocker

Had a similar situation (stain on ceiling downstairs) and thought I had sourced it to the shower.

However, resising my forceful attempts to get him to cut the ceiling (rather than ripping up the tiled florr in the bathroom) , the builder gently persuaded me to let his "man" have a look - turned out the tiler hadn't grouted the spaces between the waste pipe of the hand basin and the tiles aound it; there was a small leak where it wasn't tightned properly - the water was coming out at the hand basin, running down the pipe, along the pipe under the floor to where it joind the waste from the shower and was dripping there.

A quick tighten and grout job and problem solved - might be worth a look in your case before you start pulling everything up....

Corkey123

The only time I've ever seen a leak on a shower was when the wall was tiled without been covered with waterproof ply first.
The only thing you can do is dismantle everything and rebuild it.

It is competely unnecessary to to place plyword on a wall for tiling. The grouting is what creates the waterproof seal, placing marine ply behind the tiles will result in the moisture following gravity and dripping behind the shower tray and finally on the floor

If you have identified gaps in the grouting then thats your first area for attention. Logically you should have done this already. Yes grouting not done properly will result in leakage.

If it continues then it points to either the trap or mostly the seal around the shower.

Dj shaft

So should I use more grout to fill up the small holes visible or will white silicon do?

Corkey123

Give the whole thing a skim of grout just in case there are holes that you haven't descovered yet. Let it set and then remove the excess. Give it 12hours before testing.

If you continue to have signs of leakage then I would focus on the seal between the tray and the tiles

311

MartinCorcoran wrote:

It is competely unnecessary to to place plyword on a wall for tiling. The grouting is what creates the waterproof seal, placing marine ply behind the tiles will result in the moisture following gravity and dripping behind the shower tray and finally on the floor
/QUOTE]

I've installed a good few showers and bathrooms ,all fitted with waterproof ply. NONE of them ever leaked.
I had to do repair work once on someones house where the ceiling had fallen down. Guess what ,there was no plywood put up.

We work with a great tiler and he himself is delighted that we put ply ,for him to tile to.

GreeBo

In my experience most leaks like this are caused by water running down the surface of the tiles to where the tiles meet the bath.
This needs to be sealed perfectly due to the amount of water that will gather here.
Take off the bath panel and see what you can see from here, its the easiest way to investigate.
If its getting throug a gap in the grout I wouldnt expext much of a stain downstairs.

TKK

I'm in the process of doing a refit of an ensuite that had a tiling problem. The grouting on the walls had cracks in it and the water got through there, soaked the plasterboard and when it hit the plastic membrane in the walls flowed from there to the base of the wall downstairs. I initially thought it was the seal around the shower tray, then the waste pipe from the shower and eventually discovered that if the shower head was pointed at the wall water would appear downstairs in a couple of minutes.

I had to rip out all of the tiles and quite a bit of the plasterboard in the room and replace the lot.

Corkey123

I've installed a good few showers and bathrooms ,all fitted with waterproof ply. NONE of them ever leaked.
I had to do repair work once on someones house where the ceiling had fallen down. Guess what ,there was no plywood put up.

We work with a great tiler and he himself is delighted that we put ply ,for him to tile to.

The waterproof seal is created by the combination of the tile and grout. If water penetrates this barrier, irrespective of whether there is marine ply or other material , the moister must go somewhere. Unless there is an absorent material behind the tile this generally means the moisture follows gravity and usually falls behind the shower tray. The material behind the tile is purly for tile adhesion and provides no barrier to moisture.

For this reason the repair work to the grout is your first priority to recreate the waterproof seal. If the leak continues focus your attention on the seal between the shower tray and the tiles as suggested earlier and by GreeBo.

GreeBo

Agreed, the backing wont affect the watertightness of the finish.
However, if you have a leak and you are tiled onto plasterboard more than likely by the time you have noticed you will have to replace the black, rotten plasterboard.
With WBP you avoid this step and its also easier to take the tiles off without damaging the wall behind.

You also might notice the leak earlier as the WBP wont absorb as much and the water should appear on the ceiling below.

311

What jobs have you lads done this way ,how much do you charge ?

It takes about an hour to ply a bathroom with pre cut ply ,I really dont see what the big problem is .