Leaky bath area

Hi there peeps, i'm a complete diy amateur looking for a little bit of assistance. Done some hunting around on here but need a bit of specific advice...

Just moved into our new house and found the bathroom is rather less than watertight after finding water leaking out of the kitchen door frame and pools of water behind the paintwork. Not too impressed!

I had my suspicions it wouldn't be perfect as it looks to be a bit of a dodgy design. The bathroom is tiled floor to ceiling, problem is there is a flat tiled area around the bath / shower on which water just collects and only gradually drains away around the back of the bath onto the floor. Some photos here. Sorry the qualities not great. Camera phone. Gives the general idea though...





On closer inspection, the plastic seal around the bath itself peeled straight off with minimal effort and there is a rather crappy looking plastic seal around the wall held in place with silicone. There's also numerous small holes and gaps in the grouting all over the place so the options for leak paths are pretty abundant! Not a very clever job. I've no idea what's underneath the tiles either. The guy living here before did it al himself i think.



So, the options i'm considering..

Firstly rip up all the crap sealing strips, re-grout and reseal with silicone. Problem with this is, it wont stop the water pooling next to the bath when the showers on, and even with the best grouting and sealing job in the world (which i'm far from capable of delivering) i'm guessing the water would probably find a way through small gaps anyway?? the groutings only water resistant anyway isn't it?

Then i thought i could knock up some sort of angled wooden frame and tile up from the bath to the wall at an angle so the water runs off into the bath. I've no idea whether this is a job for someone who's never done any sort of tiling before! I'm guessing i wouldn't have to remove the tiles that are there just make sure the new tiles are well grouted to the wall and sealed directly to the bath?? Is tiling at an angle a nightmare? There's tiles left over from when it was done before so that's not a problem.

The third and easiest option of course is to do step one and then to fit a shower curtain to the back wall but i'm reluctant to do this as i think it may look a bit crap and on the face of it the bathroom looks quite nice so don't really want to ruin it.

Has anybody seen a bathroom with this problem before? I'm completely ignoring the option that it could be a leak in the bath plumbing but i'm praying that's not the case as there's no access any more but we've been having baths since instead and the leaking doesn't seem to occur.

I'd very much appreciate any ideas or advice. And sorry if similar stuff's been covered before.

Cheers,
Sam

can i firstly say, what an excellent post.
good use of pictures as well
the problem you have here is what looks like no tanking and no gradient around the bath
if you have enough tiles i would take the tiles up around the bath. and the first course around the bath. tank all the area and re-lay the tiles.
i would certainly get a shower curtain for now as the damage to your property is only gonna worsen.

tanking info http://www.wetroom.info/

As what the guy above said.

Those plastic strips are acting as a water trap - no amount of gradient will make all the water pass over that. If you were to try and recreate this with a gradient, I would try and locate a tile with a finished or glazed edge and let this edge ( uncut ) be the tile that finishes directly onto the bath. Use plenty of silicone in all the critical places, and allow to fully dry.

Standard grout is only water resistant, but epoxy resin grout will serve you well. Try and keep all adhesives and grouts flexable too to cope with the expansion differences between the tiles and the plastic bath. You can also use some of the sealers that are used on natural stone tiles to help things too.

I'd be inclined to rip out the shelf along the length of the bath and re-fit the bath against the window wall so that there's no shelf. Of course you'll have to do a bit of tiling to patch in where you move the bath. You'll also have to recreate the shelf at the opposite end of the bath to the taps but this shouldn't be a problem as regards water cause it'll be too far away from the shower for water to pool on.

gcol said:

I'd be inclined to rip out the shelf along the length of the bath and re-fit the bath against the window wall so that there's no shelf. Of course you'll have to do a bit of tiling to patch in where you move the bath. You'll also have to recreate the shelf at the opposite end of the bath to the taps but this shouldn't be a problem as regards water cause it'll be too far away from the shower for water to pool on.

Click to expand...

Cheers for all the advice guys. It sounds like a bit of proper work is required rather than a further bodge!

gcol, this is probably the best idea but not sure i have the technical skills at present! The other thing is, you can't see it from the pictures above but the bath is not set against the main wall but against a sort of column (sorry, probably not the correct terminology!) that according to the estate agent is empty. Again, not great but you might be able to see it here a bit better..



So if i was going to start ripping the bath out i'd probably be inclined to rip that out as well and do it properly with the tanking etc. Not sure how to tell if it's empty though apart from just knocking on it! My guess would have been an old boiler tank or something.

So i think the shower curtain for now and the bathroom as a bit of a longer term project! Now to convince the mrs...

Also, there's almost certainly not enough tiles to do a big job. Any hints on finding the origin of tiles? They're "Windsor" and look like B & Q packaging but definitely aren't current stock. Bit more hunting around required i guess.

Thanks again everyone.