Drying plasterboard or plastered ceiling

Hi All,

Last night I had to deal with an unfortunate accident. I had just come out of the shower and switched it off (at the shower and not the mains). I have a triton electric shower. I then turned the shower (at the shower) on to clean the bath but the high setting would not work so I used the medium setting to clean the bath, I switched the shower off having cleaned the bath and pressed the high button to see why it won't work. It didn't turn on the shower. So I left it and went downstairs (I forgot to switch off at the mains). After 20-30 mins, I noticed that water was dripping from the ceiling of the dining room (the room below the bathroom). I dashed upstairs to see the bathroom flooded with water with the shower running. Unfortunately the shower head was pointing in the direction of the middle of the bathroom rather than the bath (which would have been OK as the water would have gone through the bath)

The floor area (storage area) beneath the bath had a lot of water which then went through the floorboards and through the ceiling in the dining room and on floor as well.

I apologise for the long winded description of the cause (I thought it would help understand my predicament).

The ceiling has stained considerably and also part of it looks as though it is lower than the rest (not that obvious though). I'm not sure if the ceiling is plain plaster or a combination of plaster and plasterboard.

What I would like to know is how long would this take to dry in both cases? (this is my most important question), Is there anything I can do to speed things up in terms of drying in both situations? Is there a potential to for it collapse or have problems later on? Any advice on whether I should have it repaired by replastering it after it has dried? I'm not sure that it's quite an insurance claim but the ceiling looks awful and is still damp.

I have quite a terrible 24 hours so any help and advice will be gratefully appreciated.

Thanks

It’s almost certainly plasterboard with a finish skim but how old is the house? When accidents like this happen, the best thing to do is punch a small holes in the ceiling with a sharp screwdriver every 400mm or so in the ceiling to allow the water to drain away quickly. If the water is just left there, it can only escape through the board joints & the plasterboard gets very wet & will start to sag, then it’s best to get large flat pieces of ply & wedge them against the bits of ceiling starting to buckle to hold it up & flatten it while it dries out; it’s probably a bit late for that now so whatever warps you’ve got your probably stuck with if its dried out to any degree; you could try but if it won’t push back, you will either have to live with it or pull it down & start again.

Don’t worry about the stains at the moment but you will have to seal them before painting again; is the ceiling Artexe pattern or plain.

Depending on how wet it got, drying out will take at least 2 weeks but could be up to 4 weeks; apart from ventilating the room with open windows, do not attempt to speed up the drying but let it dry naturally.

You may get away with it but won’t know until it’s dried out; if it’s badly warped, you won’t get away with just re-plastering & probably the only cure would be to pull it down, put up new boards & re-skim. Weather or not you will be covered on your insurance depends on what cover you have; if you have accidental damage then your probably OK but if not, the burst pipe/tank clause is unlikely to cover it as you caused the damage!

My sister had a similar experience many years ago when her useless husband put 3 nails through the central heating pipes & then went up the pub. I got a frantic phone call & must have drained 20 gallons of water from her ceiling through punched holes, I propped up the ceiling with an 8 x 4 sheet of ply & a lumps of 4” x 4” timber, ripped up half the floor & repaired the central heating pipes & after 2 ½ hours went home. When my useless BIL came back from the pub, all he said was “wots those frigging great lumps of timber doing in the centre of the kitchen”; I never even got any thanks. When I took the wood down a month later, the only damage way some flattened Artex & bit of staining.

Richard C said:

I never even got any thanks.

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Ahhh,, never mind Rich,,, or was it worse than that,,, maybe a bigger,,,, AAhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. ,

Sometimes,,,,, you can get lucky with a leak above a plasterboard ceiling, and get away with minimal damage and staining,, but on a lot of occasions, the damage to the plasterboard is substantial, and would normally be better being replaced in the areas affected. All well and good if you can claim off of your insurance.

Roughcaster.

Presumably they are still removing bits of 4x 4 from the BIL?

Hi All,

Firstly, thanks Richard for your Advice. In answer to some of your questions. The house is about over 100 years old (late 19th Century). In 2004 we had the walls and ceiling skimmed so the work is still relatively recent. It does looks as though the ceiling is platerboard which has been skimmed. I have to say that most of the surface water has dried up and I think it may just be me with the fact that the ceiling looks as though it's warped (very slight if it is) What I really need now is for it to dry (particularly the plasterboard) I need to get rid of the wet plaster smell (don't know how to get rid of this, any ideas guys?) and then may just get away with painting it. Here is where I could do with some good advice and how to tackle this. My neighbour is saying to use a stain patch remover/treatment first followed by an undercoat or oil based paint with about 2-3 coats around the affected area. Would this do it? Any other ideas.

Thanks again for your advice.

The smell should disappear as it dries out. I've not personally tried it but you could try this for the stains;
http://www.duluxdecoratorcentre.co....14545&catalogId=10005&storeId=10202&langId=-1

or something similar.

Thanks Richard,

I will give this a go. Sounds like it may do the job.