Hello,

I currently rent a bedroom with an inside bathroom in a basement. Over the past few months, I've noticed that every few weeks, on the other side of my shower wall (basement side), water leaks across the floor. This doesn't happen right after I take my shower, and as I said, only every few weeks, but it can be a lot of water, and I'm afraid of mold and mildew. My bathroom remains perfectly dry, so the leak must happen on the other side of my shower stall. I had a plumber check the caulking, which he said was fine, so my guess is a drain or pipe issue. Below is a link to some pictures...the white wall in the picture, on the other side is my shower.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

Laura

[s292.photobucket.com]

Since you have narrowed the possiblity of the water leakage to the shower (it only appears after use of the shower) then it can only be a waterproofing, drain, or faucet/piping issue. This is where the plumber has to do more investigation other than the caulking of the shower and find where the leak originates.

I am guessing with the poured concrete floor and the slope of which the baseboard doesn't match, that someone put a shower surround over a kc pattern floor drain, and it needs to be snaked out. I wish your plumber some luck.

Thanks all for your help.

So...if a drain/pipe would have to be 'snaked out' do you think it would be a clog of something? Or an actual leakin the pipe?

My guess, judging on how random the leaking is, is that once a certain amount of water builds up, is when it comes through the wall. The hardest part is catching when it happens. Do you think a plumber could still find the source of the leak if I had one come in and inspect the shower drain at random?

it is simple to find a drain problem, you just run water till it backs up. Running a garden hose from a different source or removing the shower head for unrestricted flow helps however. Part of the issue is that I think someone probably tied into an existing floor drain incorrectly, and it will be very difficult for your plumber to snake the drain out effectively.

Thanks for your input. If it were a mere clog, that would be easy to discern the source of the problem, but why would it leak out to the other side of the wall? Wouldn't it just back up in my shower stall? What would be tied to the floor drain incorrectly? The pipe that supplies my shower water?

I understand that this could be a big job, but I'm trying to figure out where to start to tell a plumber what to look for. The only evidence is that water along the baseboard on the basement side of my wall.

The easiest way would be to pull the baseboard off the back wall and/or cut a hole in the sheetrock about 1 1/2 inches above the floor to get above the plate and take a look, or use a fiber optic snake/inspection cam to get behind the wall to take a look at the drain connection. the only way that it would backup into the shower is if the drain was installed properly (which I would bet is not) and if not, that it is watertight and the cleanout plug is intact. My money would be on an improper connection with the shower drain reduced to 1.5" and shoved into the P-trap of a floor drain. You need to understand that a lot of basement to bathroom conversions are done incorrectly, where toilets are plumbed into clean outs, showers are installed to use the floor drain, or in some cases, plumbed over top of the floor drain. One case I went to had 11.5" of water standing in the basement. someone had plumbed the toilet to the main line cleanout, then built a mortared cinderblock shower around the floor drain and ran the a/c condensate through the wall to the shower. The ground outside was sloped to a basement window well, and it leaked. To get the water out, I had to pull the toilet and stop trash from being sucked into the main drain. Some landlords are just slumlords looking to make a buck and do this type of thing on purpose, some people hang around the guys in orange smocks too much.

Thank you-Ill pass those ideas on.