how do I find the leak????

After a day of cleaning, with heavy use of the slop sink and washing machine, I have water dripping from the plywood / ceiling in my basement. It's right below where the washer and slop sink are (which are side-by-side on the first floor). The drip seems to have started about a half hour AFTER I finished all the work, and has been going for a good hour and a half, at about a drip every 12 seconds or so. Not sure if it's clean water or grey water.

How do I figure out what's leaking? I can't find any water around the washer or the sink, and they are draining fine.

House is not quite 3 years old, on a well, and plumbing is pex.

I shut off the water lines to the washer - should I do the same for the sink?

Many thanks for any help--

What type of drain line is it? What type of water line is it? Do you have a picture of the Washer/sink setup.

I don't have a pic and I'm not sure I understand the question - the sink drains into a pvc pipe (w/ an elbow/trap) and the washer drains into a grey flexible hose that runs into a drain hole in the wall, about 4 feet high from the floor. It's a Sears HE washer. I measured from the basement walls then measured upstairs, and the drip seems to be closer to the washer than the sink, but hard to tell.

alleycat said:

... flexible hose that runs into a drain hole in the wall, about 4 feet high from the floor....

Click to expand...

a p trap for the washer is at the bottom of that pipe.

it could be leaking. Wait until you eliminate the water supply as a possible source. I guess the sink p trap isn't leaking, since you said it is dry.

you turned off the washer supply. Has the leak stopped?

david

husband returned home from the football game and determined that my measuring was off (-:
we pulled out the insulation in the ceiling and found that the leak seems to have come from the bathroom, situated about 5 feet away from the washer/slop sink. I didn't use the sink/toilet in that bathroom all day, so it's still a mystery; water was coming from a drilled hole in the ceiling where the water supply line to the toilet runs, and also seeping through the plywood about 5 inches away from that hole. There was about a 1/4 cup of water in the bucket this morning, but the dripping has stopped.
Plumber is coming Thursday for some other work so we'll have him take a peek.