David001

@marshian, same here: the leak from near the top of the water-tank had saturated the chip board forming the floor of the water-tank cupboard, so the owner had evidently pulled away the sodden board directly beneath the tank and then lain over it some thin plank-like strips of floor covering . . . which hid the hole and fooled our us and our surveyor! Thankfully the board directly beneath the feet of the tank was dry so the tank was still well-supported, nevertheless the leak from the tank must have been considerable . . . and it was still leaking when we moved in. With all that Nick has contributed, I'm now inclined to think that the dripping from the ceiling below may have been coming from the leaking water-tank and not from the floor of the adjacent shower cubicle. The big test will come soon when I switch on the shower for the first time in ages. Fingers crossed! 😀

I reckon the leak occurred just before completion. The previous owner cut a sizeable square out of the ceiling below. Whether he was able to find the point from which the water came, I don't know. But he wedged a small pot-plant dish beneath the L-shaped waste-pipe, presumably to catch drops of water. Then using map-pins, he pinned a sheet of white foam-board over the hole in the ceiling to sort of cover it up! I then came along, peered inside, saw no water in the tray, no dripping, so I asked a contractor who fitted new cupboards in that room to cover and plaster over the hole as well. So, no, I can't now examine the underside of "the tiles". After drilling holes through the grouting, here and there but equally spaced, and then inserting lots of Fixafloor, I placed three big heavy buckets of water on the tiles and left them there for two weeks! But I haven't had the nerve to use that shower since! 😅 https://fixafloor.co.uk/products/fix-a-floor-pro-repair-pack Thanks very much, Nick, for your photo of a former inset into the floor. That probably explains why the cubicle tiles slope a little to the central drain while the tiles outside the bathroom appear to have been stuck to the same stretch of chipboards as are under the carpet of the adjacent room. So if the leak is from the shower cubicle, it's probably from the drain or drainpipe. BUT adjacent to the shower cubicle is the hot-water tank cupboard, and from the side of it I found a leak about nine months ago. That leak looked like it was "ancient" because of encrustation all the way down the path of the dripping water. But where did the water end up? It must have ended up somewhere. Maybe it was that water which appeared in the ceiling area beneath the shower cubicle? I fixed the leak from the hot water tank and there's been no further water dripping from the ceiling below, but of course I haven't had the courage to use the shower! I guess that shower is going to have to be tested sometime soon! 😱

@Nickfromwales. that's really helpful. Thanks. One of the pictures on the web-page for that tray shows it straddling several beams (below floor level), which suggests that the tray is incredibly solid and supportive, that it has no "give" in it. Is that right? Because the floor tiles adjacent to the carpet are a little lower than the carpet, I think that if a tray lies below the tiles in the cubicle, the tray must have been deliberately laid a little lower than the tiles in the rest of the bathroom (for the tiles inside and outside the cubicle to be at the same level). Or perhaps no tray was used, but that wouldn't account for the slightly sloping tiles around the central drain, which surely can't have been laid on a uniformly flat surface. You wondered why I'm reluctant to "simply" have the tiles taken up, and having a thorough remedy being implemented. Well, the reason is this. I'm located halfway between Llandrindod Wells and Knighton, so getting people to travel here to do such work is difficult. Most of the nearest people are over the border, in Hereford (80 minutes' drive) or Shrewsbury (90 minutes' drive). So I have had to almost beg people to come and quote for the odd job which I wasn't able to do myself. There's a price to be paid for rural bliss! 😂

@Alan Ambrose, the previous owners had done just that just prior to completion, and had then covered the hole with a piece of light paper-board, pinned in place. When we unpinned the board and looked inside we found a small pot-plant dish had been wedged underneath the central drainage point, but it had not a drop of water in it. Then looking closely all through the exposed area we found it was too much of a dense forest of pipes and beams and other bits of wood (as well as several electrical cables!) that it wasn't possible to determine the point at which water had entered from the shower-floor above. So I'm inclined to think that we're going to have to lay a new tiled floor. @Nickfromwales @ProDave @Big Jimbo @Alan Ambrose Would it be possible to give the present floor some thick coats of something long-lasting, pliable, and waterproof (painted on, or some kind of thick pliable waterproof board), and then lay new tiles on top of that? This might save ripping up the current floor. There would then be a slight step up of about an inch from the floor outside the cubicle, but that could be dealt with by replacing the cubicle door (which swings inwards) with a curtain.

Hi. Can this shower-cubicle floor problem be solved without having to lay a completely new floor? I've bought a home with a first-floor shower-cubicle and quickly found that shower water made its way through to the room below, dripping from the ceiling of that room. I then found that there were some cracks and gaps in the grouting between the black tiles in the cubicle, so I filled them with "flexible" grouting (although it doesn't seem flexible to me). I then noticed that some of the tiles moved downwards a fraction when stood upon - this probably caused the grouting to crack in places. So I made a number of holes in all of the grouting and squeezed into each hole quite a lot of a very powerful glue designed for this kind of situation, hoping to make firm and solid whatever is directly beneath the tiles, or to remove the sponginess beneath the tiles by solidly bridging between the underside of the tiles and whatever is beneath them. But I have not dared to used the shower since then, for fear that water may still get through to the cavity and the ceiling beneath! 🙂 I expect the central tiles were cut into the eight triangles so as to enable each triangle to slope downwards as they do towards the centre, to direct water into the drain. Is there a waterproof product of any kind which could be placed over the tiles to ensure that all water goes into the drain? It would have to be a product which looks smart, and is tough enough to withstand being struck by water every morning and occasionally being scrubbed during cleaning. Thanks a lot for any help given!

@Temp, thanks for your opinion and for the interesting video. I note that the man used a polyurethane to protect the floors in that house but before then he went to a great deal of trouble to clean the floors. I think that's what I will do: simply clean them several times to remove remaining soil and to expose the original surface of the tiles.

@MikeGrahamT21, thanks for your help. I don't mind the odd bit of joint being darker than the rest. It's the overall look that I would like to improve. So I will simply give the floor several more hard mop-overs.

The house we have bought has laminated tiles on the floor of one room. The tiles were laid 13 years ago and their condition suggests they received only an occasional sweeping. The surfaces of the tiles look dry. I have rubbed the floor with warm water (with a couple of drops of washing-up liquid in it) and that operation turned several bucketfuls of water dark grey. So I think the floor is now as clean as it can be made. The photos below show the current appearance of the floor. The close-up suggests that each tile is actually a fibrous board with an impression of real wood imprinted onto it and into it. In some parts of the room some paint was spilt and it's clear that the paint was soaked up by the grey, fibrous, 45-degree edges, but that it couldn't permeate the wood-effect surfaces. While rubbing over the floor I noticed how the moisture from the mop "varnished" the tiles so that they shone and mirrored the light from surrounding windows and doors, which led me to wonder what I might be able to do to improve the floor's appearance. I would prefer not to coat the floor with a polyurethane or similar coating because past experience has suggested that the coating gets worn away where usage is high, requiring the coating to be removed and replaced. So beside further occasional rub-overs with a damp mop, is there anything I can do to improve the tiles' appearance?

@Iceverge, thanks for all your advice. The brass unit was thoroughly cleaned, and then it's thread was coated with plumber's mate, and then carefully repositioned, and now all is well. 👍

@Iceverge, thanks for the advice above which I have only just found - after four hours (mainly spent working out how to empty the tank of all its water!), and managing to unscrew the horizontal brass piece entering the grey plastic collar. Please see the photo below. The thread of this horizontal brass piece is deeply encrusted with calcium or some other white deposit, perhaps including some degraded plumber's mate. The stiff grey plastic collar has a thread on its inside! By pushing my finger as far as I could extend it into the plastic collar, I found that the thread eventually ends and the plastic becomes smooth and continues inwards beyond the end of my finger. So the horizontal brass section, which I unscrewed from the inside of the grey plastic section, is male, and the grey plastic collar is female. I had expected the brass section to be female, and had expected to find that it was attached to a male piece inside the grey plastic collar. Anyway, presumably the long thin sensor attached to the brass fitting sits constantly within water, explaining the leak which has been occurring between the grey collar and the brass piece. I don't dare to extract the grey plastic collar, as it seems to me that it must be bonded to the inner skin of the tank. I suppose that it is possible that being plastic the collar may nevertheless have cracked, so that water has escaped under the collar rather than inside the collar. Although perhaps it's been passing out through both routes. I am cleaning the horizontal brass piece and the interior of the grey plastic collar using vinegar and occasional gentle rubbing with a toothbrush. This may take a number of days. Then I will try screwing the brass piece back in position, using some plumber's mate and then wait to see if the leak has been stopped. What is the purpose of the brass piece with the sensor attached? How does it work? And is there anything else that I ought to be doing - or which I not to be doing? 😱 I have no experience of plumbing, so all of this has been a little "terrifying". 😁 Thank you.

@Iceverge, thank you so much for your helpfulness. With that grey plastic disc in position it's difficult for me to see whether the leak has come from behind it or whether water dropped onto the face of it from the brass fitting above. But you have given me enough reason to have a go, hopefully today, at, firstly, trying to drain the tank, and then seeing if I can unscrew the brass fitting in order to clean up the threads and apply a little Plumber's Mate.

@Nickfromwales, thank you. With your advice in mind, I've looked beneath the barrel of the mixer unit. Below is a photo of the situation there. The gap between the white ceramic tile and the barrel is just under a centimetre. I actually have a tiny camera (with LED light) on the end of a 2 metre "snake". The camera at the end of the "snake" is just under a centimetre in diameter. While I might be able to force the head through the gap it wouldn't be able to turn to peer around in the space. It could only look straight ahead. As the photo shows, there is a "wall" of pink plaster under the barrel. And it's dry, with no sign of having been damp. Would it be of any worth if I used a screwdriver & hammer to chisel it away so as to peer in further? Would removal of the pink plaster destabilise the position of the barrel to cause problems in the future? Thanks.

@ProDave, thanks, yes, I agree, "if it was done properly"! 🙂 But unfortunately since moving into this house which was built 12 years ago we have been challenged by quite a few things which definitely were not done properly. So I can't have faith that a proper tanking membrance was laid and that it lapped part way up the walls before the tiles were put down. 😞 I was hoping someone might be able to tell by examining the plastic or fibreglass fitting around the drainage hole.

@Iceverge, many thanks for the video, and for the pic of a tank. Please could you have a look at the further close-up below, which shows my tank's leak point? It seems that the thin grey plastic disc, which I thought was more aesthetic than anything else, is the outer part of a grey circular plastic pipe which enters the opening in the metal skin of the tank. Do you think that that grey plastic is "hiding" a metal thread protruding from the skin of the tank, as in the photo of the tank which you have just posted?

@JohnMo and @Iceverge, I've now cleaned away a lot of the encrustation on the side of the tank and can now more clearly observe what's going on. I've made sure that any water that escapes through the hole near the top of the tank will dribble directly onto a plastic lid I've placed under the tank. I put the lid in position 30 minutes ago, and already an oval of water has formed on the plastic lid, showing how much water is seeping from the tank during a 30 minute period. It's more than I was hoping for, suggesting I need to get this leak fixed sooner rather than later. If at the leak point I remove the plastic disc around the brass fitting that passes through the outer metal skin of the tank, and if then I were somehow able to unscrew the brass fitting from the inner metal skin, I believe the hole in the outer skin will be too narrow to allow any work to take place through it. What is the likely distance between the inner and the outer skin? In other words, how thick is the insulation foam between the two skins? Do you have experience of, or thoughts about, the "Santon Premier Plus Unvented Indirect Cylinder"? Thank you from a 70-year-old who has no experience of plumbing! 🙂