Shower causes damp

[JoceAndChris]

Beacon Cottage has recently acquired its first shower. Sacrilege as it is, lighting a fire for Chris, heating up water in a copper and pouring it into a hip bath and all in time for the 7.22 am train became a bit much!

No, seriously, we rigged up a nasty cheapo shower above the bath that spits out either freezing cold or scalding hot brown rainwater and now there's horrible seeping damp ion the wooden floor of my airing cupboard! The cause of the damp must be perished grouting around the bath, and this must be remedied immediately. The water has seeped down behind the bath (the bath is enamel, enclosed in panels), under the 30s wooden panelling that comprises the end wall of the bathroom and into the walk-in airing cupboard which adjoins.

How best to dry it out? Please don't tell me we have to remove anything. The floor throughout is old wooden boards, with nothing on top. Underneath the floor is a void, and under that rubble and earth.

 

[Michelle73]

Not nice, no wonder you're not up a ladder this morning!

Do you have any little heaters you could set up around about to help evaporate the water? Dehumidifier?
Mebbe sit with a hairdryer and blow hot air on the floor for a wee while? I've been know to use same method on damp jeans when desperate!

 

[Flyfisher]

I wouldn't apply much heat - might dry things out too quickly and result in shrinkage and/or cracking.

How long do you think things have been leaking? If you've only just fitted a shower then it may only be a short while, in which case things are probably not completely saturated and will probably quickly dry out of their own accord given plenty of ventilation.

Is the bath panel easy to remove?

 

[JoceAndChris]

Thanks for support. Went and pottered round Stamford, lovely. Decided I'm only going to work a four day week in future. 8)

I wouldn't apply much heat - might dry things out too quickly and result in shrinkage and/or cracking.

How long do you think things have been leaking? If you've only just fitted a shower then it may only be a short while, in which case things are probably not completely saturated and will probably quickly dry out of their own accord given plenty of ventilation.

Is the bath panel easy to remove?

I thought about getting a hairdryer in there, and then I remembered what happened to my brother and decided against it. (he decided to leave a little electric heater running in the damp cellar in his student house for three weeks while he was away as they weren't getting billed for electricity. There was little ventilation. On his return, huge bracket fungi were sprouting from the walls and bits were caving in :roll: )

Things have been leaking for 5 weeks. The airing cupboard is so full I couldn't see. I smelt it before seeing it. The bath looks like it's boxed in, and then tiled all over. I suppose I should really pull out the sideboard in the dining room (the other side of bathroom) and see what's happened there.

 

[Flyfisher]

Things have been leaking for 5 weeks. The airing cupboard is so full I couldn't see. I smelt it before seeing it.

Oh dear. I'd still try to ventilate everything as much as possible and monitor how the drying out progresses. The problem with pulling everything apart is that you may do more damage than the water, which will eventually dry out anyway. On the other hand, it's difficult to know how saturated things are without pulling everything apart.

Er, I'm not helping much am I? :?

 

[JoceAndChris]

You're always helpful. I'd be lost without you!

What does dry rot smell like?

 

[Michelle73]

What does dry rot smell like?

:lol:

Mine smells of fresh air & bleach, lovely!

 

[Penners]

I agree with Flyfisher. It's important that you seek out all possible secret corners where damp might be lurking - particularly those that are boxed in and can't be ventilated.

Provided the air can circulate around all your soaked areas, they should dry out without too much residual damage (apart from some possible watermarks).

Gentle warmth and plenty of ventilation is the ideal prescription, This allows drying out to take place naturally, without too much risk of the warping or cracking that FF warned you about.

I apologise if this sounds pompous, but do remember that it's invariably easier to ensure that leaks like this don't happen in the first place, than to clear up the consequences of not doing so!

That's known as the Wisdom of Hindsight. :wink:

 

[JoceAndChris]

You know I love it when you get cross with me.

Yes - hindsight is a wonderful thing. TBH I should have realised but the grout looked fine. When you really peered at it you could see tiny cracks and fissures, but it wasn't in a terrible mouldy state or anything like that.

Anyway dearest husband has regrouted and let's hope the gentle heat of the hot water tank in thr airing cupboard will be sufficient to dry it all out.

 

[Flyfisher]

In my experience, the problem with grouting around a bath is that it's very difficult to get a reliable and long-lasting seal, partly because of the sealant materials and partly because of the movement of the bath. This doesn't really matter as far as bathing is concerned (depending on what you get up to, of course) but it's very problematic for showers. We had a similar problem in another house many years ago but it was only until the wallpaper started peeling off the other side of the bathroom wall that we noticed the problem!

Since then, I've stuck to separate shower cubicles and have used shower trays with an upstand that extends up behind the tiles so it's impossible for water to seep out.

 

[JoceAndChris]

That's interesting. I agree with you that a separate shower is a much better situation. Maybe I should stick duck tape on that grouting too.

There isn't space within that bathroom for a separate shower, so unless I can achieve my dream of turning the dead space above the scullery (lacking a roof) into a great big bathroom we're stuck with the compromise of the shower above the bath.

I was thinking that maybe if the bath were replaced with a free standing claw foot bath there might be a way to rig a shower up above it with curtains that could draw all around the circumference. That way at least if there's sploshing outside the tub you can see it, and, if we tile that floor, mop it up easily.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

You're always helpful. I'd be lost without you!

What does dry rot smell like?

The interior of St Margaret's Church, Mapledurham, Oxfordshire.

Or mushrooms, quite a sharp-edged smell of mushrooms. (It just happens that I was introduced to Serpula Lachrymans at Mapledurham by the late Ken Major http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6787679.ece when I was working for him in about 1994, and when I called back there in August just before his funeral, it was clear they haven't got to the bottom of it - took me back 15 years.)

 

[JoceAndChris]

What an extraordinary thing to be grateful to a person for. But very useful, and how sweet your memories are. Thanks Gareth.


I smell mushrooms in the wine cellar, maye it's just the leakage of a particularly fine vintage though!

 

[Ushy M]

I was thinking that maybe if the bath were replaced with a free standing claw foot bath there might be a way to rig a shower up above it with curtains that could draw all around the circumference. That way at least if there's sploshing outside the tub you can see it, and, if we tile that floor, mop it up easily.

I stayed in a friends' house recently who had just that arrangement - I was thinking of the same approach in our house - I'll ask her how they managed to suspend the shower rail/curtain. Flyfisher's right about the difficulty of grouting/sealing around the bath because of the flexion. I read somewhere that you should fill the bath with water first, but I'm not sure if this advice just relates to acrylic/plastic baths.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Thanks Ushy M. The curtain rails fix into the ceiling - here's a very good version but at £430.00 it's a bit pricey!

http://www.thomas-crapper.com/product.asp?intProdID=778&n=Shower%20Curtain%20Rails%20-%20Oval%20Curtain%20Rail%20%28End-Stays%29

I haven't a clue how you fix up the shower though, unless that's on the ceiling too.

 

[Cloudscape]

This suggestion might be out of the question, but I was just wondering... if your "walk-in airing cupboard' wasn't quite so "walk-in"... might you have room for a separate shower?

 

[JoceAndChris]

You're always ten steps ahead! :shock:

It could be done and many would do it without a backwards glance, in fact, we planned to when we moved in. I know you'll understand my hesitation, though, when you see the pics, and realise how much historic fabric would be lost.

See in this one how there used to be a door in the door frame just under that air vent thing - the entrance to the closet I was talking about in Michelle's thread. You could put a door back in there, and remove the other two doors you see in the picture. The one straight ahead is the entrance to the bathroom and the one just seen on the right is the entrance to the airing cupboard. If you replaced with just one door you could then knock the two rooms together. (The airing cupboard is just a whisker too small to be a shower room in its own right).

Here's the airing cupboard door a bit more clearly. Inside it's 1.25m by 1.10m, and 2.50m tall.

Here's the bathroom, you see it's very narrow, and completely tiled with tiles I haven't made up my mind about.

There's a nice old window with original shutters from which you can watch the robins in the holly, I wouldn't change that.

The bath occupies the entire length of the opposite wall, this is because the back of bath unit conceals the boxed in workings of the back boiler for the fire in the music room. I wouldn't want to rip that out either; that back boiler is brilliant- free hot water! But you see how it takes up a chunk of space- it's all the area under that brown washbag. If you removed the back boiler, and all this tiled surround, took the bath out and sited a free standing bath further back, an extra couple of feet could be gained which would mean a shower could go in the airing cupboard, provided that you removed all the panelling behind the bath taps. The second picture here is high up and shows the top of the door, I couldn't get it all in. But the panelling's quite nice, or will be when I've painted over all that horrible gloss white. You understand my reservations about ripping it all out and changing it?

And while I'm on the bathroom, does anyone know what this thing is in the ceiling? And also, the glass in the above pictures - is it nice? Worth keeping or just 70s tat?

 

[AMc]

I was thinking that maybe if the bath were replaced with a free standing claw foot bath there might be a way to rig a shower up above it with curtains that could draw all around the circumference. That way at least if there's sploshing outside the tub you can see it, and, if we tile that floor, mop it up easily.

The problem we had with that arrangement at a holiday cottage was if you put the curtain inside the bath then the heat rising off the water from the shower created an updraft that sucked the curtain in on you wrapping you up inside it like processed meat. If you put the shower curtain outside then obviously the water dripped outside the bath. In the end we left the curtain part open and mopped the floor afterwards but I wouldn't have wanted to do that for more than a week.
I'm sure there is a way to make it work, but the hoop around the central shower head looked pretty but didn't work!

 

[Moo]

...with tiles I haven't made up my mind about.

Do you really mean that, Joce?
(It sounds as though you're undecided about whether you like them or not.)



They remind me of the bathroom tiles I inherited in our last house. I simply waited until I had the house to myself for a week and tiled over the lot.

 

[Ushy M]

completely tiled with tiles I haven't made up my mind about.

You just mean you haven't quite decided what to replace them with. Haven't you? :wink:

BTW, if that's a recent pic of your lovely holly, we're in for a mighty cold winter! The berries on our holly tree are barely turning red.