4 Common Causes Of Bathroom Water Damage
When you think of water damage happening to your home, you most likely envision bursting pipes and water flooding into your home. However, water damage can occur in a much more stealthy manner in areas that are often exposed to water, such as your bathroom.You can read more about the 4 causes that are usually responsible for the most water damage in your bathroom.
Missing Or Deteriorating Grout
Grout is an admixture of water, cement, sand and occasionally fine gravel that is used to act as a sealant in between tiles. Tile, being common accouterments in bathrooms, means that you will sometimes find that the areas between tiles might be missing grout, or the grout in between the tiles is beginning to deteriorate. Missing or deteriorating grout means that your tiles will become susceptible to water damage, either from outside of the tile itself or from behind or underneath the tile.
A quick way to check if your grout is deteriorating is to take a coin and knock on the tile in question. If it sounds "hollow" then its support – the grout – is beginning to deteriorate.
Leaking Shower Pipes That Are Hidden Behind Walls
Many forms of water damage are mainly invisible to the naked eye and require a closer inspection to detect the source of the leak. Shower pipes behind the walls of your bathroom are many times the source of a heavy leak. If it is the case that these pipes are not visible, how can you tell if the pipe is even leaking? There are a few things that you can look for. If you see a preponderance of mildew forming in your bathroom, especially close to the showerhead, it may be the case you're suffering from a leaking pipe.
In addition, if you find you have water stains on your bathroom walls or wilting wall paper, you may want to take a closer gander at the pipes behind the walls, or call a professional to do so.
Improperly Installed Toilets
An improperly installed toilet can be the source of a water leak in your bathroom. In most cases, if the culprit is your toilet, this will be fairly obvious. First and foremost, if water is blatantly coming out of the sealant of your toilet – where the toilet bowl meets your tile or bathroom floor – then the case is that your toilet is leaking.
If you're finding water damage on your floor, but it's not quite so obvious that the toilet is the case, give it another look. Is the toilet askew? Are the bolts properly fashioned to the bottom of the toilet and the floor? Is there a foul odor emitting from your toilet? If the answers to these questions are yes, no, and yes, respectively, it may be the case that your toilet is the culprit of the leak.
Cracks In Sink Seals And Grout
If sealants are not properly installed, or if they are simply becoming worn and old, then you may have to replace or repair them. Check both your sink seals and grout very carefully for cracks. With sink seals, check the area where the sink meets the attached wall, and for grout, simply eye the sealant between the tiles and hit the tile with a coin, listening for a "hollow" sound. Water can get underneath the sink and start to erode the wood under your countertops, causing much more serious issues.
Leaking water in your bathroom can be a serious problem, and if you have found that your bathroom has suffered serious water damage due to one or more of these things, you will most likely need to call in a water damage repair professional to help ensure that the problem is remedied before larger issues, like mold, start to occur.