Plumbers in Converse, Texas

The tile is not the waterproofing

This is the single idea that makes every other part of the subject make sense, and almost nobody is told it when they buy the house.

Water gets through tile and grout by design. Grout is cementitious and porous. The assembly is built on the assumption that water will pass the surface, reach a waterproof layer underneath, and be carried back to the drain through weep holes in the drain body.

The waterproof layer is a pan liner or a membrane. In older construction it is a sheet liner folded up the walls and clamped into the drain. In newer work it is a bonded membrane over the substrate. Either way it is hidden, and it is the part that actually keeps the house dry.

When the liner fails, the tile carries on looking perfect. Water passes the surface as it always did, reaches a liner that no longer holds it, and goes into the framing, the slab edge or the room next door. Re-grouting at that point is money spent on the wrong layer.

Blocked weep holes cause the same symptoms. If the drain's weep holes are packed with grout or debris, water sits on the liner instead of draining, saturates the mortar bed and finds an edge. The liner is intact and the shower still leaks.

Age is a fair predictor. A sheet liner installed in the eighties or nineties has had thirty years of movement, hot water and settlement at its folded corners. If a Converse house still has its original tiled shower floor, the question is when rather than whether.

Telling a pan leak from everything else it looks like

Damp at the foot of a shower wall has several possible causes, and they have very different prices. Guessing is expensive in both directions.

The flood test settles the pan question. Plug the drain, fill the pan, mark the level and leave it. A pan that loses water over several hours has failed. A pan that holds is telling you the problem is elsewhere, and that is worth knowing before anyone opens a wall.

Water only when the shower runs points at the valve or the arm. A leaking mixer body, a shower arm connection or a diverter can wet the wall cavity exactly like a pan failure, and it is reached from behind rather than by demolishing the floor.

Water with nothing running at all points at supply. On a slab house that raises the possibility of a slab leak under the bathroom, which is a different investigation with different equipment. Ruling it in or out first avoids the bad version of this job.

A wet spot outside the room narrows it further. Damp carpet in the adjoining bedroom, a dark line along the hall skirting or a stain on the ceiling below all indicate roughly where the water is leaving, and we work back from there.

Ask for the test result before the quote. Any honest assessment of a tiled shower starts with a test that can be described to you, not with an estimate for a rebuild.

Check the door and the curb too. A frameless screen that funnels water to one corner, or a curb that has cracked, will wet a wall from above the waterproofing no matter how good the pan is. It is a cheap thing to rule out and it explains a surprising number of these calls.

What a proper repair actually involves

People want to hear that a failed pan can be patched. Occasionally it can. Usually the honest answer is less comfortable and cheaper over ten years.

A failed liner means the shower floor comes out. Tile, mortar bed, liner, back to the substrate, then a new liner or membrane, a correctly set drain with clear weeps, a new bed to fall, and tile. It is a multi day job and any quote that treats it as an afternoon is describing something else.

Do the valve while it is open. The wall is already off and the valve behind it is the same age as the pan that just failed. Replacing it now costs a fraction of doing it as its own job later.

Waterproof the walls to a sensible height. Not just the floor. The lower wall takes constant water and the corner between wall and floor is where most of these assemblies give out.

Coatings over failed tile are a delay, not a repair. Sealers and paint on systems do keep some surface water off for a while. They also trap what is already behind the tile, and they make the eventual rebuild dirtier.

Dry the structure before closing it up. If it has been leaking for a year the framing and the subfloor are wet. Tiling over damp material puts the next failure on a timer.

Budget for the floor outside the room. Where water has been running for a year the damage rarely stops at the threshold, and the flooring in the hall or the bedroom is often part of the honest scope. We would rather say that at the quote than discover it with the tile off.

How a call plays out

Tell us where the damp shows and whether it appears only when the shower is used. Those two answers usually decide whether this is a pan, a valve or something under the slab, before we set off.

Converse, Universal City, Schertz and the rest of northeast Bexar County are on our daily route. We flood test before we quote, we tell you when the pan is sound and the money belongs elsewhere, and we do not sell a rebuild to solve a blocked weep hole.