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Last night I discovered water damage to the ceiling directly beneath my upstairs walk-in (tiled) shower. We just moved in to this 42 year old house a week ago and my family has used this particular shower 2-3 times. In the shower, where the floor and one wall meets, I noticed what appears to be a hairline crack in the grout. We’ve stopped using the shower to determine whether this is the cause of the water damage on the ceiling below. Using the adjacent bathroom’s shower and other fixtures in both bathrooms has not caused any growth in the water marks on the ceiling below. Do you think the water damage is the result of what appears to be a hairline crack in the grout?
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Brian, this is hard to judge without a destructive inspection.
Chasing leaks can be fustration to the 4rd degree.
I suppose you could clean out the area you think may be cracked and apply a silicone bead to it in order to make a temporary seal. Take a few showers and check it our below for additional staining.
Are you sure that the damage wasn't there before?
You could open the ceiling and check the drain connections from below. If you want to minimize the repair area, you can open just a small area of 12 by 12 inches and install a prefabricated access panel for future use and repairs.
Regardless, you do have to determine if the leak is from a failure in the grout, drain, water lines, valves or whatever, before you can do repairs.
Good luck with your quest,
Gabe
*Brian-I'd go with the temporaty fix, and using the shower to see if the damage gets worse.My gut would tell me to look for a different source of the problem. I wouldn't expect a crack of your description to cause damge that quickly. I'd me more apt to check the seal around the drain...ect.I don't envy having to track this down.
*Oh, come on, it's not that hard. Before you start tearing into anything you should first ascertain the source of the leak. At this point, everything is suspect. Could be the waste line, the shower floor, the walls , or the wall plumbing. Assume nothing.To isolate the source, you need to be methodical and patient. Start with a dry shower. Have a second person below staring at the ceiling, keenly observing. Pour water from a bucket or water source other than shower down drain only. If no leak, plug drain and fill shower pan slowly just so water cover said grout joint at wall/floor joint. If no leak, spray water directly at walls starting at bottom of wall and work towards the top. If no leak, turn on shower plumbing.Each step requires you work slowly--to allow any water to appear as leak--and to avoid spilling or undue splashing on adjacent surfaces. This does require patience and does eat up some time. I think this is preferrable to opening up a hole here or there. I mean, what if you find the hole you've opend up is in the wrong place? Well, it wouldn't be the first time, trust me.
*Brian:I had the same scenario on my personal residence. It was a small (seemingly insignificant) crack at the tile/shower-pan junction. Do as Gabe and/or Rich suggest.
*Brian, the grout joint could be leaking but the problem is the shower walls and pan are not containing the water. If you have been there only a week sounds like the previous owner has a problem. One big leak source is the opening where the plumbing comes through the tile. It must be sealed at the faucet handle(s) and around the head pipe. Lots of water will splash through these areas. Pull the escutchions or whatever is hiding the openings and have a look. These holes go through the tile, backer board, building paper right into the stud bay. Joe H
*Oh yeah, I forgot one important thing. At least in CA, there is a home inspection required whenever property is sold. Structural defects are one of the biggies on the inspection. It sounds like you have a condition which existed prior to the sale of the home. This means the inspector is on the hook for not catching it, the seller is on the hook for not disclosing, and possibly your realtor for not acting in your behalf. Check to see if this applies in your state. If, as Joe pointed out, the pan is defective and needs to be replaced, you're looking at spending more than $2K. Plus living with the dust generated by selective demolition for over one week. Your call.
*I hesitate to be negative on this, but even though you probably have legal recourse as far as seller disclosure, you may still end up eating the bill. We had a similar situation when the sewage ejection pump buried in the yard (between us and the city sewer) failed a month after moving in. The seller had failed to disclose it, though previous digging and age of the pump indicated he knew of its presence. It was impossible to detect by inspection - it was buried in the yard beneath grass. The listing realtor started off very angry with the seller and agreed that we shouldn't have to foot the $3000 bill. By this time the owner was at an unknown address. Having made their money, the realtors didn't try real hard to locate him, and we were stuck with the bill. Since, of course, I've heard more horror stories (foundations without rebar being one). Now I think the seller disclosure is just a piece of paper.
*Amy, sorry to hear of your experience. They are common though. The pre-sale inspection is misunderstood by alot of folks. The inspection has limitations in scope and intent. Foremost, the inspector is limited to reporting only that which is easily observed. Too, without the proper licensing, the inspector can only include in his report that which he has knowledge of. To wit, without a "termite license", the inspector cannot even say, "Looks like you have termites.".Yet, in spite of these limitations, the inspection does have value. How many homebuyers are going to check the condition of the every appliance including the waterheater, the condition of the roof and supporting structure, the elect. panel and fuses, plumbing, outlets, etc. etc.? Then, do most of them know what they're looking at. Hate to say it, but under the current guidelines of a home inspection in CA, your experience and that of a leaking shower are a bit like apples and oranges. First of all, the shower is part of the structure. Second, the defect of such a leak is quite noticeable.I suggest you get up and do a little digging to find where the seller is and get after him. Also, have you notified your state's Real Estate board? I think they would have something to say about a realtor who gave up on acting according to the strict guidelines of their profession.BTW: now is when I get to tell this story. Some years ago I got a call from this homeowner who wanted my opinion on his 6 month old porcelain tile floor throughout his home. Not only was I amazed by the sound of walking in sand when walking across the floor, but I was able to, at random, pick up a tile by prying my finger along the edge. Right away, I gave my professional opinion and asked if he had been in touch with the installer. The homeowner said he had called the guy, but his phone was disconnected. He started in about how it was too much trouble to go after the guy. Aghast, I suggested he at least contact the state contractor's license board and send a registered letter to the guy's last known address. Homeowner said he didn't have the time and it probably wouldn't amount to much anyway. This for a job he paid over $10K. He then asked how much to redo his floor. He balked at my price, saying it was too much. Much of the cost of the original price was because of the expensive Japanese tiles. I said we could reuse those same tiles if set in wet mud and explained the installation method. My price to him was a bit less than the original. So, he got took for overpaying, he got took for a shitty job, and he got took a third time for not doing anything about it. Some people, eh? (It was about one year later that he finally put down a new floor.) Don't be like this guy, Amy. Don't get taken a second time. If you don't want to do it, I think for cents on the dollar you can find someone who will.
*If the sewage ejection pump failed i one month after you bought the house, it's not clear to me that the previous owner is responsible, or even that he knew that there was a pending problem. The pump must have been working when you moved in or I doubt that you would have even made it more than 2 days before everything was backed up. When you say that he failed to disclose it, do you mean that he failed to disclose that the pump was there, or failed to disclose that it was faulty? Also, $3k seems like a very large amount to pay for a pump - unless the sump tank and lines had to be replaced too, and the whole "mess" was buried 8' under ground.
*He failed to disclose the pump's existence. That would have affected the value of the home. City sewer means a direct connection to city sewer - not 'between you and the city sewer you have a small 30 gallon septic tank with a pump in it that is likely to fail every 5 years or so'. He checked the city sewer box on the seller disclosure, without reference to mechanical intervention. Had he disclosed its existence, he would be totally clear as far as I'm concerned - no one can predict the exact date of an appliance malfunction. Of course, it's easier to predict a general timeframe if you know it is there and can inspect it. Expense was added to our problem because we didn't know it was there. We ended up paying rental on a 580 to dig up sewer line, thinking that tree roots had crushed the pipe. Then, after finding the pump, we spent the extra money and sweat to build a steel vault around it so it would be accessible next time. The wood box around it was collapsing under the dirt, though some attempt had obviously been made to shore it up.As for tracking him down, frankly I'm afraid of him. He was sort of a survivalist type (not the gentle, benign, I live for and from nature kind, but the hotheaded, owns many weapons and uses dead things for decoration kind). The guy blew a gasket when our closing was delayed one day by the bank. I was OK when an organization (i.e. the realtor) was going after him for money, but not me as an individual. He knows where I live. I do believe reporting the realtor is a good idea - I only wish I'd thought of it 2 years ago... I wonder if it is too late.Thanks for your sympathy. I only brought this up to illustrate that going after the seller can be difficult. Especially if a home inspection didn't spot anything. If there isn't evidence of OLD water damage, he just has to say that it was fine when he moved out. If he never used that shower, he wouldn't know there was a problem. Even with the protections provided us by the law, it still comes down to buyer beware.
*btw, the whole "mess" was buried 7' underground. We had to hand-dig most of it because the gas line and water main ran inches away.
*The plot thickens. You ever think about publishing this stuff, Amy? I mean, homeowner blues caused by non-disclosing previous owner, inept realtor, and the guys is a militaristic radical! Truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction.BTW: what does the city have to say about all this? In my neck of the woods, there is a backflow preventer installed by the owner when the city finally does confess that, yes, there is a possibility of raw sewage entering the home from the main. The cities say either do this or forever worry about the possibility. Of course, the cities are not culpable.
*Rich, Perhaps a soap opera, 'Days After Closing'. We have a backflow preventer between pump and city. I'm doubtful there is one between the pump and the house, considering how we discovered the problem - what a mess. Anyway, when I redo all of the plumbing in the house (a couple of years away), I will put a backflow in where the pipe exits the home. I'm hoping to reroute all of the main floor plumbing to avoid the pump, so as to extend it's life. This is loose usage of 'I', sewer lines are one of those areas where plumbers really earn their money! Honestly, a real septic tank would have been easier, and we'd probably have nicer grass.
*Next house I sell, I'll list suggested failure dates of all the appliances: Dishwasher- two years, Refrigerator - three years two months, etc.And...I've got dead things decorating my house and lots of guns. Doesn't necessarily make you a nut. Everybody is somebody's wierdo.
*Ryan, Having dead things for decoration is a matter of taste, not an indication of weirdness. However, it does indicate a presence of weapons, which I don't like combined with the hot temper that he displayed. Added to things which the guy said when I looked at the house, I didn't want him mad at me.
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Last night I discovered water damage to the ceiling directly beneath my upstairs walk-in (tiled) shower. We just moved in to this 42 year old house a week ago and my family has used this particular shower 2-3 times. In the shower, where the floor and one wall meets, I noticed what appears to be a hairline crack in the grout. We've stopped using the shower to determine whether this is the cause of the water damage on the ceiling below. Using the adjacent bathroom's shower and other fixtures in both bathrooms has not caused any growth in the water marks on the ceiling below. Do you think the water damage is the result of what appears to be a hairline crack in the grout?