If you just freshened up in your upstairs bathroom and your guests downstairs are welcomed by droplets of water leaking on their heads, it’s time you check your bathroom floor for water leaks.
A leaking shower can indicate broken or loose pipes, a clogged drain line, damaged bathroom tiles, or a leaking drain gasket.
It doesn’t always present itself in more considerable ways. Sometimes it’s because the damage happened gradually, and its effects are felt little by little and not all at once.
Still, it is something you should attend to immediately.
A small shower leak may not be alarming at first. However, if you don’t find the source of the leak and are left untreated, that tiny water leak can cause extensive water damage over time.
Let’s find out why it’s leaking in the first place.
Why Is Water Leaking Through The Ceiling After A Shower?
There is a multitude of reasons behind what’s causing leaks. The most common problems are broken pipes, loose O rings, damaged tiles, and abrasions in the drain line.
Guess what? Behind those causes are primary causes. It’s a domino effect. One problem causes another, which leads to you and your guests suffering from the sight of a large water stain from the ceiling leak.
Structural Damage
Here’s something that causes broken pipes and tiles.
The original contractor may have cut costs or neglected to ensure the integrity of the home’s fundaments.
Underlying causes of structural damage
Measurements that are slightly off can cause problems down the line. Tiles that don’t fit or weren’t laid correctly can crack and succumb to elements much faster. A leak that goes through its tiny abrasions can cause mold damage and deteriorate your home much quicker.
Mold
Listen, we all know mold is terrible. Mold and mildew are dangerous, harmful, and hazardous to your health.
They can also expedite your home’s deterioration. In Melbourne, Florida, with its warm climate, your home’s water supply pipe can be the perfect breeding ground for multiple mold colonies. The presence of mold flowing through your main water line and attaching to different fixtures of your home can cause wood rot and other structural damages.
The domino effect of mold and mildew
The more damage mold causes, the easier for water-leaking to cause more significant damage to your plumbing systems and enlarge the ceiling hole it caused primarily. It won’t be long before your ceiling’s integrity gives way to the excessive moisture and crumbles into your living room.
The water stains you see around your ceiling shouldn’t be left unchecked. That’s how dangerous mold can be and can stem from minor shower leaks. Call a professional plumber immediately at the first signs of mold or decay.
Clogged Shower Drain
Fortunately, you can catch things before they become irreparable.
It’s easier to fix a clogged shower drain line. Immediately attending to it can prevent mold growth and other problems that may exacerbate things.
Compounded effects of a clogged drain
Water leaking anywhere in your home may be due to clogging. A clog in your shower drain can cause water leaks from excessive water pressure build-up and burst through pipes. Damaged pipes can cause water to leak inside the shower wall and drip down into the shower floor. The water can collect where the ceiling of the room below and the upstairs flooring meet, which is where your ceiling leak may be coming from.
Am I causing the clog?
Your shower head uncontrollably leaking means the clog is worse than you think, and its build-up has forced water in more directions than down. If your shower head leaks while it’s turned off, stored water pressure might build up excess moisture within its waterline. This is also evident when your shower pan is no longer emptied by its drain.
Remember, a clog in your drain line can affect your shower, faucet, and in some cases, toilets. Typically, they are caused by things getting caught in your drain gasket or pipe. Particles like hair, excess grout, and other debris can build up and block proper water flow.
You can repair this yourself, but extensive clogging requires a professional plumber’s snake to remedy. There’s an industrial-grade drain snake, paired with a professional’s know-how, and it can efficiently rid you of your leaking problems.
Maintaining bathroom floor drain
All drains can get clogged, and one can affect all drains that are linked to the same water line. It’s why you should ensure grout lines are laid down precisely because its excess may collect in the drain on your bathroom floor tiles and affect the drain of your shower, faucet, and toilet.
Additionally, if it’s close to your trash can, pieces of trash like small plastic, paper, and cloth fabric particles can get caught inside your bathroom drain.
Maintaining Shower Floor Drain
Perhaps the one drain most prone to clogging is your shower drain.
The size of your drain gasket and the depth of your drain pipe in your shower area are more extensive and deeper than most drains in your home. However, they are still the largest possible contributor to your water leaking through ceiling problems.
Do-It-Yourself (DIY) solutions
It can be remedied by a little baking soda and vinegar solution you can make at home.
- Turn your shower faucet ON.
- Turn it to a WARM setting.
- Add half a cup of baking soda to your drain.
- Add one cup of vinegar to your drain.
- Cover your drain for ten minutes.
- After ten minutes, take the cover off and let HOT water run through the drain for at least one minute.
This DIY fix should clean out any minor build-up. However, it won’t clear out any larger contaminants like hair and plastic particles.
Snaking solution you can do by yourself
You can prevent clogs from happening by routinely snaking your drain. One preventive solution is adding a drain stitch to your drain gasket and pulling it out every week to dislodge anything that piles up.
However, it’s best to hire a licensed plumber who can help you when your leaking shower causes water damage to your bathroom that’s too much for you to handle on your own.
Snaking tips:
If the shower-leaking-through-ceiling problem isn’t convincing enough for you, a water leak anywhere in your home should indicate a drain clogging somewhere.
All water leak issues, including your shower-leaking-through-ceiling problem, may be solved by a simple soda and vinegar washdown or a good snaking. However, please remember to take it easy on your pipes. Don’t just push and prod down there like you’re exploring the new world. You might end up causing abrasions and holes that weren’t there before, leading to a new water leak.
A shower leak is enough of a problem, don’t cause more problems trying to remedy one issue. Remember these tips before you get into your kitchen sink drain.
- Use tools exclusively designed for snaking. They are made with materials that are tough on blockages but gentler on PVC plastics that your pipes are most likely made of or iron in older plumbing systems. They are also blunt at the tip, which may prevent causing abrasions to your drain’s interior. They also come in softer or more flexible alternatives if you don’t have the dexterity to handle a stiffer or harder one.
- Feel around gently, don’t take jabs at it. You are working blindly, and the slower and softer you go, the fewer risks you pose to your shower drain and sink’s P Trap.
- An additional step you can take is using magnets. Yes, magnets. Hold a strong magnet on top of your sink’s drain in case any metal or magnetic obstructions are small enough to fit. They might be light enough to get pulled out by the magnetic attraction. Pendants, earrings, and metal studs can fall into your shower tray and get sucked into the drain without you knowing, so if you often forget to take the jewelry off before you shower, take this extra step. This step might also be useful if you notice certain metal fixtures are missing around your bathroom. Don’t forget, a bathroom tile that is porcelain or ceramic is also magnetic. If you have a chipped bathroom tile with its broken piece missing, it may be down there.
- A preventive measure you can take is attaching a shower stopper with a chain attachment. Some have multipurpose chain attachments that prevent it from floating away and catch things like hair, floss, fabrics, and other gunk sinks into your drain. It’s an inexpensive piece of equipment you can buy to prevent water damage in the future.
When It’s Time to Call a Professional
A professional can locate the source of the leak if it isn’t from a damaged gasket, broken shower or faucet pipe, excessive moisture build-up, or loose grout lines.
Call Mac5
Call for Mac5 services when a water leak isn’t going away before shower leaks worsen.
Report water damage and what you think is causing the problem to get a free estimate on our website. We can fix all your leaks and repair all your drains!
Whether the leaking is from broken pipes that need repair or your ceiling is leaking day and night. We can help you solve the issue!
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