Hi,
In the summer I installed a shower room in a single storey single brick pantry, which is attached to my victorian semi-detached house. The floor was already concrete and the walls are single brick skin. I doubled up the wall thickness with battened PIR board followed by tiles.
The shower tray rests on OSB board on top of wooden battens fixed to the wall.
Recently i removed the shower tray panel to discover the entire underside of the tray very damp, of which there are several possible causes i can think of.
1. Waste pipe leaking - there is no evidence of this, so i've ruled this out.
2. An unsealed branch pipe, which i was originally going to connect a sink to, leading into the main shower waste was left totally unsealed, meaning that steam from the shower could have potentially been emanating out into the space below the shower tray for best part of 6 months. I've now sealed this, and dried out the underside using a fan.
3. Tray front panel not sealed properly - i'd not sealed small (2-3mm) gaps which could have potentially allowed damp air from the room to get behind the panel.
4. Damp rising through concrete - the concrete is quite old and not particularly thick and i doubt there is a DPC. That said, there was never any evidence of damp in these rooms before i installed.
If i have to end up removing the shower tray, can the concrete be sealed? If so, how?
5. Penetrating damp from outside - Given that there is only single skin brick and no external render, it's possible that water ingress is taking place when it rains, and getting through the brick below ground level and bypassing the insulation which only goes to ground level.
Would it be worth putting in a cement plinth on this wall to prevent water ingress?
In the summer I installed a shower room in a single storey single brick pantry, which is attached to my victorian semi-detached house. The floor was already concrete and the walls are single brick skin. I doubled up the wall thickness with battened PIR board followed by tiles.
The shower tray rests on OSB board on top of wooden battens fixed to the wall.
Recently i removed the shower tray panel to discover the entire underside of the tray very damp, of which there are several possible causes i can think of.
1. Waste pipe leaking - there is no evidence of this, so i've ruled this out.
2. An unsealed branch pipe, which i was originally going to connect a sink to, leading into the main shower waste was left totally unsealed, meaning that steam from the shower could have potentially been emanating out into the space below the shower tray for best part of 6 months. I've now sealed this, and dried out the underside using a fan.
3. Tray front panel not sealed properly - i'd not sealed small (2-3mm) gaps which could have potentially allowed damp air from the room to get behind the panel.
4. Damp rising through concrete - the concrete is quite old and not particularly thick and i doubt there is a DPC. That said, there was never any evidence of damp in these rooms before i installed.
If i have to end up removing the shower tray, can the concrete be sealed? If so, how?
5. Penetrating damp from outside - Given that there is only single skin brick and no external render, it's possible that water ingress is taking place when it rains, and getting through the brick below ground level and bypassing the insulation which only goes to ground level.
Would it be worth putting in a cement plinth on this wall to prevent water ingress?
