Waterfall, Take 2
OK, I was wrong. It wasn’t the crappy drain trap that leaked.
In fact, it was nothing plumbing- or pipe-related at all. The leak can be traced to two things: the shower surround, and the seal around the tub itself. Exploring the surround, I discovered an unsealed gap that I could stick half my hand through into open air … in exactly the place where water from a shower would bounce off a body in a shower and onto the wall. Um, OOOPS. So on went the caulk there.
Almost fine. 3 days later, a smaller amount of water comes in, but this time I’m able to catch where it’s coming from … the outside edge of the tub. Exploring that region, I find that the lower inch or so of the molding is in very bad shape indeed; I was able to poke a finger through the wood. Yikes. So the temporary solution was serious gobs of caulking along the old plastic molding/sealer, about halfway down the tub, and more in the corner at the front end. Lots more. There’s still a small drip, but that should get taken care of with some touch-up caulking.
Of course, all this requires a more long-term solution, but as long as the serious water infiltration has stopped, I’ve got other things to do. Like work on better soundproofing for the ceilings.
September 11th, 2005 at 8:22 am
Good luck, lad. I dealt with a problem like this for 13 years, and finally, after replacing the bathroom floor and subfloor myself, re-doing the kitchen ceiling (under the bathtub) twice, blowing through five different types of caulk, each of which promised to be the latest and greatest (and scraping every bit of them off when they didn’t work either), ripping out dry wall and re-doing trim…we finally got a new tub and bathroom this year, with cementboard and new tile around the tub. We’re finally dry. Tubs suck. I feel your pain.
April 3rd, 2006 at 4:04 pm
[...] « Molar Oh yeah … the waterfall So, the indoor waterfall. It’s been traced to the source(s). Yep, two leaks. Leak 1 = seam in the flo [...]