I’ve been hearing an odd dripping sound in our master bathroom for the last month or so. It’s an inconsistent drip, sometimes I hear it and sometimes I don’t. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason as to how often or when it occurs but I do hear it at least intermittently on most days. On certain days it’s dripped about every 20 seconds or so. It sort of sounds like water dripping from a shower, although here the shower is turned off so that’s not the cause. It’s very odd in that it sounds like it's dripping from at least 3-4 feet and it sounds like it’s coming from high up – either from or onto the ceiling itself or from an upper portion of a wall.

I had our roofer take a look at our roof last week and he confirmed the roof (including the area above the bathroom and the area around a skylight which is above the bathroom) is all sealed properly. He couldn’t find any roof openings or leaks. Nor was there any standing water on the roof or in the nearby gutters (in case the sound was from water dripping in or onto a gutter). There is no attic above this bathroom so there’s just the roof directly above the ceiling. The dripping doesn’t seem to increase when we turn on either of the two faucets in the bathroom or when we run the shower or bath. There is no water leaking from underneath either of the two faucets. Further, I suspect our AC unit isn’t the cause since we’ve only run it once or twice in the last 3 months.

My fear is that there’s a pipe leak of some kind in one of the walls but what is very strange is that I cannot see how there’d be any pipes so high up on the walls or near the ceiling. The roofer, after spending a lot of time looking around our bathroom, thinks the cause of the dripping might be related to one of the 4 sewer vents we have that extend from the ground up through the roof and surround this bathroom on the outside. Perhaps something is stuck near the top of one of the sewer vents and accumulating water that drips down.

I do have a plumber scheduled to come over mid-next week so I’m hoping that can nail down the cause. In the meantime, does anyone have any thoughts as to what might be causing this dripping sound?

Thank you.

Do you have a pump on, or near, the water heater?

most likely expansion contraction of your hot water piping.
plastic isolators not too firmly attached can solve this problem.

NP16, i thought the same thing.. but with the sound coming every 20 seconds, i highly doubt it is expansion.
expansion noises start out pretty close together and get slower until they stop.

Check toilet tanks to make sure they are not over-filled and running down the overflow. Are you getting any ghost flushes of toilets?