I've got a strange problem with a customer I have had dealings with. It
is a tenant, and I am working for the landlord. The tenant is rather
difficult to get on with, and tends to exaggerate the problems in the
house.
Anyway, they have a combined shower/toilet downstairs, which has been
crudely converted into a 'wet room', i.e., when you have a shower,
everywhere gets wet, and is meant to drain into a central drain in the
middle of the floor.

I got a call saying there is a water leak, and the floor is soaking in
the kitchen, outside the room.
I went, sure enough there is water damage showing, so I ran the shower
for 10 minutes or so, but could find no leak. The tenant insisted that
it was running through the wall (single breeze block, tiled in the
shower, painted plaster on the outside).
I check all the edges/joins and grout lines for cracks etc, but all
looked well. Also checked all water pipes everywhere, no leaks at all.
I put it down to splashing over the door, running down, and leaking over
the poor quality, unsealed door threshold.

So I sealed up around the door. Got a call a week later, it is still
leaking. This time there was evidence of a water leak, half way up the
outside on the room. So it seems she wasnt exaggerating when she said it
was coming through the wall. Check again the interior. No crack or gaps
in the grout.
So I'm stumped. Ok, it must be leaking somewhere, so I got the go ahead
to get out the old grout and redo it. The old grout was rather strange,
in that it was slightly damp, with a chalk like appearance when scraped
out.
My query - could the leak be caused by the water leeching through this
grout?
I thought all grouts were waterproof, or have I been misinformed?

Ta
Alan.

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In article ,
A.Lee wrote:
My query - could the leak be caused by the water leeching through this
grout? I thought all grouts were waterproof, or have I been misinformed?

My guess would be movement causing the grout to crack. If the movement
isn't too great an epoxy grout should sort it.

--
*It's not hard to meet expenses... they're everywhere.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"A.Lee" wrote in message
...
I've got a strange problem with a customer I have had dealings with. It
is a tenant, and I am working for the landlord. The tenant is rather
difficult to get on with, and tends to exaggerate the problems in the
house.
Anyway, they have a combined shower/toilet downstairs, which has been
crudely converted into a 'wet room', i.e., when you have a shower,
everywhere gets wet, and is meant to drain into a central drain in the
middle of the floor.

I got a call saying there is a water leak, and the floor is soaking in
the kitchen, outside the room.
I went, sure enough there is water damage showing, so I ran the shower
for 10 minutes or so, but could find no leak. The tenant insisted that
it was running through the wall (single breeze block, tiled in the
shower, painted plaster on the outside).
I check all the edges/joins and grout lines for cracks etc, but all
looked well. Also checked all water pipes everywhere, no leaks at all.
I put it down to splashing over the door, running down, and leaking over
the poor quality, unsealed door threshold.

So I sealed up around the door. Got a call a week later, it is still
leaking. This time there was evidence of a water leak, half way up the
outside on the room. So it seems she wasnt exaggerating when she said it
was coming through the wall. Check again the interior. No crack or gaps
in the grout.
So I'm stumped. Ok, it must be leaking somewhere, so I got the go ahead
to get out the old grout and redo it. The old grout was rather strange,
in that it was slightly damp, with a chalk like appearance when scraped
out.
My query - could the leak be caused by the water leeching through this
grout?
I thought all grouts were waterproof, or have I been misinformed?

Ta
Alan.

--
To reply by e-mail, change the ' + ' to 'plus'.

Ideally you need to tank the walls before tiling. Whoever tiled the walls in
the so-called wet room did not know what they were doing. Ideally, all
tiles will need to be removed, the walls tanked, then re-tiling with the
appropriate adhesive and grout.

On 16 Apr, 08:55, (A.Lee) wrote:
I've got a strange problem with a customer I have had dealings with. It
is a tenant, and I am working for the landlord. The tenant is rather
difficult to get on with, and tends to exaggerate the problems in the
house.
Anyway, they have a combined shower/toilet downstairs, which has been
crudely converted into a 'wet room', i.e., when you have a shower,
everywhere gets wet, and is meant to drain into a central drain in the
middle of the floor.

I got a call saying there is a water leak, and the floor is soaking in
the kitchen, outside the room.
I went, sure enough there is water damage showing, so I ran the shower
for 10 minutes or so, but could find no leak. The tenant insisted that
it was running through the wall (single breeze block, tiled in the
shower, painted plaster on the outside).
I check all the edges/joins and grout lines for cracks etc, but all
looked well. Also checked all water pipes everywhere, no leaks at all.
I put it down to splashing over the door, running down, and leaking over
the poor quality, unsealed door threshold.

So I sealed up around the door. Got a call a week later, it is still
leaking. This time there was evidence of a water leak, half way up the
outside on the room. So it seems she wasnt exaggerating when she said it
was coming through the wall. Check again the interior. No crack or gaps
in the grout.
So I'm stumped. Ok, it must be leaking somewhere, so I got the go ahead
to get out the old grout and redo it. The old grout was rather strange,
in that it was slightly damp, with a chalk like appearance when scraped
out.
My query - could the leak be caused by the water leeching through this
grout?
I thought all grouts were waterproof, or have I been misinformed?

Ta
Alan.

--
To reply by e-mail, change the ' + ' to 'plus'.

My brother in law had exactly the same problem and it turned out the
grout was not waterproof he had to get the whole lot done again. His
was done by a professional tiler so I'm not sure whether he used the
wrong grout (would seem a school boy error for a professional) or
whether the batch he used was faulty. As they were not sure the
source until they started ripping out the shower (thought it was a
pipe leaking somewhere), the insurance company paid for the
investigation and remediation.

In article ,
"Dave Plowman (News)" writes:
In article ,
A.Lee wrote:
My query - could the leak be caused by the water leeching through this
grout? I thought all grouts were waterproof, or have I been misinformed?

My guess would be movement causing the grout to crack. If the movement
isn't too great an epoxy grout should sort it.

Epoxy grout is waterproof, but I don't think it will cope with any movement
at all.

You can make ordinary grout waterproof by adding a waterproofer/plasticiser
to it, such as BAL addmix GT1. I do this in showers, because it also seems
to prevent the grout getting dirty -- if it's waterproof, dirt can't get
into it, and that theory has worked perfectly on two showers I've done so
far. The BAL addmix GT1 is expensive, but a little goes a long way.

--
Andrew Gabriel
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