Another Tub/shower leaking, Look at Rot in Photo!

Hello,

Look at he rot around the tub! Can i use some sort of sealant in the tub/shower joints to stop this? I'm pretty sre the water is coming from bad or undone caulking in the shower wall and tub seams. Hoping to get all the plumbing issues in my house straightened out.

Thanks,
Molo

You can use an epoxy to seal that crack in the tub. Then, just caulk the tub and fixtures with the appropriate caulk. If you have ceramic tiles, you must check to see if any are loose, and if the grout is missing anywhere.

I'm not sure that there isn't something else going on there, however. What kind of tub is it?

More photos of Leaking Shower/Tub

Hello,

Thanks Verde, here are some more images. If you look at the ridge on the back of the tub, it appears that this is where alot of the water is coming from. Any more ideas?

Thanks,
Molo

Looking at the pictures it seems that almost any place there could be a leak, there is a leak.

I'd start all over.

Take the whole Shower/Tub apart, and recaulk?

Hello Plumber1,

Thank you for the response. Take the shower apart recaulk, and put back together? What caulk should i use?
This shower has been in place for 28 yrs.

Thanks,
Molo

I wouldn't take anything apart unless I was going to replace it. Just get some white silicone caulk and go to town on those cracks.

I'd replace it all. I don't believe in covering up a mess, especially with things growing back there.

shower daily?

you have shower water coming down a bad wall. Grout is missing in many places. Shower water trickles in behind the tiles. It can seep through bad grout that only looks solid, too.

If you had only taken a weekly shower then the humidity might have dried out between uses, and the problem would not have gotten this far. Moisture is now deep inside that wall.

Molo, you can't let mold grow. It seems too late now for any "quick fix". The tiled wall has to be re-done. Rip it all out, put a vapor barrier this time, and tile on that. If you only redo the grout and silicone, you'll still have living mold -- billions of cells -- in that wall, grabbing whatever moisture they can get from the atmosphere, and continuing to offgas their toxins. Search on mycotoxins and see how bad they are. Mold, once grown, cannot be starved to death by dryness; it just doesn't work. The mold stays there and may not grow much more, but isn't killed by a new application of good grout and sealant.

Hope this is good news to you.

david

edit: i should have said that your tiles are butted together, so no grout will ever have any place to grip. The little grout that one might get to stick on the crack will cling to the glazing. Chunks of it will inevitably fall off.
- Your picture only shows the part of the wall that your camera could get visual access to. If you have a soap dish in the wall, there will tons of mold behind and around it.

leaks

There are no "tiles". It is a fiberglass shower surround. The panels should be overlapped so that there is no way for the water to leak through unless the joint was submerged. But with that amount of ongoing leakage, probably at the tub to surround joint, it would be best to tear it out and start over since it would be very difficult to make a good seal after that period of leakage.

Hello,

You're right, it's a vinyl tub, no tile. So I should cut the wallboard out, take apart the shower/tub unit, recaulk, put it back together, and patch the walls?

Thanks,
Molo

You need to kill the mold before you put it back together.

ok no tiles. Got it. Fiberglass pieces.

Now I see it as fiberglass. Golly gee, and it makes more sense that way too.

So, is the consensus that I should take it apart, and put it back together after i clean up the mold and recaulk?

nodding yes

consensus seems to be building around that plan.

This is what will be torn up!

If I remove shower, I will have to cut the wall out around any shower flange, and then repair it! Bummer

Molo

let sleeping dogs lie?

if you leave it and just make it as watertight as possible, just realize that you need to pay attention to how you manage the mold. If humidity is high enough, the mold will get worse. I don't know how bad it is now. It will cause air problems.

But do you need to rip all this out now. I can not say.

david