Basement Ceiling Leak - Part 3 - Not The Drain Pipe

In Part 2 of our basement ceiling leak series, I described our initial attempts to fix the leak apparently coming from the en suite shower.

The day after I resealed the shower drain as described in yesterday’s article, we proceeded to take two showers. Once done, I then checked the ceiling tile in the basement. A new water stain had emerged in the same place as the previous water stain. When I removed the ceiling tile, I confirmed that it was the same pipe from which the water was dripping.

Now, it is a slow leak. It is not like water is gushing out onto the basement floor causing significant water damage. Yet, it is a leak, staining the ceiling tile in the basement’s drop ceiling and it should not be happening. It did not happen for the first 4 months or so once we started to use our new en suite.

In hind sight I should have known that it was not the drain pipe in the floor of the basement. Why? Well, here again is the picture of the pipe in the ceiling of the basement. If you look closely you will see that it does not have that dip (some call it an elbow) in the pipe which all such drain pipe have to hold a small amount of water which prevents any bad odours coming out of the pipe and into the room.

So, a few days later while taking a shower I noticed some water build up on the tile floor against the built in tiled bench. Now, the water all dissipated into the drain once the shower was complete, however during the shower there was a steady collection of water. I returned later that morning to examine the sower floor in that area and noticed an approximately 4 inch gap that had no silicone caulking at all. And, where was that gap? Well, it was directly across from the floor drain.

I also noticed that the edge of the built-in tiled bench there were small cracks in the caulking and that this part of the bench seat did not have any silicone caulking applied.

So, in a few more days, once the stain on the ceiling tile in the basement continued to grow in size and once I had some time during the day (remember I have my own day job ), I proceeded to apply fresh silicone caulking to the area on the shower floor across from the drain which had no silicone caulking yet was where there was significant water build-up during a shower.

I also applied silicone caulking on the edge of the built-in tiled bench where there were cracks starting to show in the grout.

Did this work? No. I thought for sure that it would work. Nope. In tomorrow’s article, we get help.