Bathroom Mystery
We were asked to have a look at a leaking first floor ensuite in a new house. The owner had reported that the bedroom carpet was wet at the entrance to the ensuite. The room was 4.5 metres long and 1.8 metres wide with a full width shower at the far end. The shower and bathroom floors were separated by a 60mm tiled hob and a semi-frameless shower screen had been installed. Other than the shower, there was a double vanity and toilet in the room which had been fully waterproofed.
We peeled back the carpet and watched for leaks while spraying water around the base of the shower. There was no sign of the leak so gradually we sprayed higher up the walls. No water appeared at the doorway until eventually we discovered a fine hairline crack in the grout between two tiles. This crack was about 20mm long and situated 850mm above the shower floor and 300mm in from the shower screen. Each time we sprayed water onto this point it would appear at the ensuite door a few seconds later.
So how did the water get past the shower screen, hob, and over 3.5 metres of floor to the doorway?
Simple really - Weeks earlier, the tiler had used a notched trowel to apply adhesive onto the shower wall, moving it from right to left and high to low prior to placing the tiles. Those diagonal gluelines combined with a slight defect in the grout allowed water to escape the shower.
The water got sucked into the grout crack and in between two ridges of tile adhesive. Then gravity carried it diagonally down over the hob to the wall /floor junction where there was a gap between the floor tiles and the wall. This gap ran around the perimeter of the room until it reached the doorway where it could seep into the carpet. In effect there was a tiny pipeline with 850mm head of pressure from the shower wall to the doorway. The aluminium tile trim, which should have acted as a waterstop to seal across the doorway, had been cut too short by the tiler and was only acting as decoration.
The moral of the story is that when tiling wet areas, notched trowels should always be used in the direction that you want the water to drain. In the case of shower walls - vertically.
Also waterstop angles should be watertight otherwise they are just decorative trims.
Author Steve Kirby
We peeled back the carpet and watched for leaks while spraying water around the base of the shower. There was no sign of the leak so gradually we sprayed higher up the walls. No water appeared at the doorway until eventually we discovered a fine hairline crack in the grout between two tiles. This crack was about 20mm long and situated 850mm above the shower floor and 300mm in from the shower screen. Each time we sprayed water onto this point it would appear at the ensuite door a few seconds later.
So how did the water get past the shower screen, hob, and over 3.5 metres of floor to the doorway?
Simple really - Weeks earlier, the tiler had used a notched trowel to apply adhesive onto the shower wall, moving it from right to left and high to low prior to placing the tiles. Those diagonal gluelines combined with a slight defect in the grout allowed water to escape the shower.
The water got sucked into the grout crack and in between two ridges of tile adhesive. Then gravity carried it diagonally down over the hob to the wall /floor junction where there was a gap between the floor tiles and the wall. This gap ran around the perimeter of the room until it reached the doorway where it could seep into the carpet. In effect there was a tiny pipeline with 850mm head of pressure from the shower wall to the doorway. The aluminium tile trim, which should have acted as a waterstop to seal across the doorway, had been cut too short by the tiler and was only acting as decoration.
The moral of the story is that when tiling wet areas, notched trowels should always be used in the direction that you want the water to drain. In the case of shower walls - vertically.
Also waterstop angles should be watertight otherwise they are just decorative trims.
Author Steve Kirby
