Daily Home Renovation Tips

In Part 11, we identified a few causes of the shower leaking into the basement from the en suite shower that was installed as part of our home renovation 9 months ago.

There was more, the primary cause.

The day after Bennett finished breaking up the concrete floor, he returned with his son, Alex, to remove the concrete and continue on the project.

Once the shower floor was free from the concrete, it revealed the full water proofing floor mat.

What it revealed to us was a lot. While you cannot tell in the picture above, but in the top left corner, the mat had been installed with a hospital corner fold.

The issue was, however, that as can be seen in the picture above, the fold was such that only a little water needed to find it’s way onto the water proof mat before it would sufficiently collect to go over the fold. In other words, the fold was way too low to the base of the floor.

This caused the water to leave the water proof mat, on top of the fold, onto the adjacent drywall, down to the particle board floor and then underneath the horizontal 2 X 4’s and either down to the basement to leak onto the drip ceiling tiles or onto the dry wall on the other side of the wall (which is where we found the mold growing in the adjacent potty room.

Yuk.

In fact, sufficient water had collected in the water proof mat that some of it was still there, even though we had not taken a shower for at least two months in that bathroom.

The above picture is of the part of the mat ripped away by us that was wet. If you see a shiny part in the picture below, that is the wet part.

Next time, drying out the floor and boards.

To continue with the next article in this series, simply select this link to Part (Lucky) 13.