Drip
I have a leak somewhere in my bathroom. I thought I had conquered it. But alas no. In my hallway there is a quarter-sized brown spot in the ceiling. After one shower I had gone downstairs and noticed a drip-drip sound. The drip was coming from the ceiling and I figured it related to the shower.So I ran the cold and hot water to figure out if it was coming from one of the pipes. No. Then I changed the shower head setting, to relieve some of the pressure from the other setting. Nothing happened. I figured it was all good. Then this morning, drip-drip-drip.
The bathroom has a lot of crackhead design problems. And I was hoping to wait till I got a new job/position (it's kind of up in the air until the end of the year) before doing a big gut job on the house. I want to just completely redo the bathroom and I don't want to invest too heavily in it before gutting it. But I'm going to have to call a plumber, but I need to see where the leak is coming from. So I'll run some tests tonight.
posted by Mari @ 20.3.06
6 Comments:
I had a similar problem several years ago when I lived elsewhere. It took a while, but we learned that the fixture inside the wall was going bad.
That is: the water valve inside the wall had a leaky gasket caused by sediment in the line.
When / if you do get a plumber, have him put one of those plastic access panels instead of patching up the drywall if applicable (or is there already an access panel?). You may have to do repairs down the road and that would save some time and money.
If you're just seeing it, you've probably had it for a while. It can take a year for a small leak to soak enough wood to travel to where it can drop off into your drywall. (This is experience speaking.)
I'd say you should tear out a large enough hole in that drywall to get up into the ceailing to do a check with c flashlight. (You're going to have a hole there anyway!) Drywall fixing could be the least of your problems, and that drywall's shot now anyway around the bad spot. The sooner the better.
If it isn't obvious, get a 1x2, maybe 6 feet long. Tape a piece of paper towel onto it. Put it under/touch where you think it's coming from. May help, may not. If it's farther than 6 feet, get two and tape together, you're just sliding it along the joists..
The comment about bad fixture and slow leak corresponds to what we had one time: "Bent" Diverter. Probably used, installed by the original renovating contractor. Fixed that. But you might want to get into your shower innards and check with a clean paper towel.
Also: Check your shower stall (which you may have done.) If you have the slightesat leak, etc...
The guess is that you don't have a pipe joint leak, since you'd know about it real quick.
If nothing's obvious, then it's plumber time. But if you find it first, it may just be good neighbor time. (And certainly not the plumbers that did our place.)
Anonymous 'cause I can't figure out the username/password thing, and I forget passwords anyway when I invent new ones.
Re- Anonyomous comments
End your posts with your initals or some ID like the following.
--Mari
How does the cauling around the tub look? I had a similar problem and it was the caulking that had cracked.
Anon
Drywall's easy. I'll send Mattie over to fix it up for you.
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