Pontas Home diárias do Renovation

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.

In Part 10, Bennett had finished breaking up the poured concrete floor as part of repairing the floor of the new shower that was part of our home renovation just 9 months ago.

Even before the pieces of concrete were removed from the shower floor, one of the causes of the leak were revealed.

In fact, even before any of the concrete shower floor was broken up, the second cause of the leak was revealed.

Now, cause #1 was the improper drain which we have already discussed.

Cause #2 was revealed only when Bennett had removed part of the wall tile at the base of the shower floor.

The approach taken when the shower was first built was to put the shower tiles first on the ceiling and then on the walls of the shower. The shower floor was last. Per Bennett, this was not correct. What should have occurred was to build the shower floor first, including the floor tile, and then tile the shower ceiling and walls. Why?

Well, you want to have the shower floor tiles underneath the wall tiles. this is so when water from the shower rolls down the wall tile it will reach the floor tile directly. And, with a properly sloped floor that is sloped in all areas of the floor towards the drain, the natural path for the water will be to go towards the drain, even if there is insufficient silicone caulking at the point where the floor and ceiling tiles meet.

However, in this case, with the wall tiles installed before the floor tiles, when water from the shower came down the walls it did not meet the floor tile; rather, if there was any gap in the silicone caulking between the wall and floor tiles the water would have done through the opening and into the grout. Grout is pores and eventually water would have gone through the grout and onto the concrete sub-floor. This is what happened to make the concrete under the floor tiles by the time Bennett broke it up into pieces damp around the far wall and the wall on the left.

Now, even in this case the leaking water should have been retained by the rubber water proofing mat underneath the concrete floor. That is what it is supposed to do.

Once Bennett had finished breaking up the concrete he uncovered a small hole in the rubber water proofing mat. Was this caused by the drilling of the concrete floor. Per Bennett, no.

Even if the hole was made by the drilling, once the broken concrete was removed, we found what we think is the primary reason why water that found it’s way onto the water proofing mat found it’s way out of the shower and into our basement. That’s for next time.

To continue with the next article in this series, simply select this link to Part 12.