Diagnosing an upstairs plumbing leak can actually be a lot trickier than a lot of people may think.  In fact, when I worked for Allstar Plumbing, one of the questions we asked every potential employee during the interview process was how to properly perform this diagnosis.  Even when . . . → Read More:]]> Diagnosing an upstairs plumbing leak can actually be a lot trickier than a lot of people may think.  In fact, when I worked for Allstar Plumbing, one of the questions we asked every potential employee during the interview process was how to properly perform this diagnosis.  Even when making the scenario fairly simple, almost everyone got it wrong.  Here is the scenario that we gave:

“A home owner calls you out because they have a wet spot in their ceiling directly below the upstairs tub/shower.  It’s getting worse over time.  To make the scenario easier, we will eliminate the possibility of the leak coming from the toilet or lavatory sink.  We will focus on the tub/shower combo.  How do you go about diagnosing the source of the leak?”

Plumbing Leak In Ceiling

Almost every single interviewee responded that they would cut a section of sheetrock out of the ceiling and look through the hole with a flashlight.  Sounds reasonable, right?  It’s the wrong answer!  Here is why:

First of all, what if the leak is being caused by a fault in the faucet itself or the tub spout?  Maybe the leak is due to the trim plate not sealing properly or some bad grout or caulking in or around the tile.  In all of those instances the plumber would have created a hole in your ceiling that does not need to be there.  It would be a shame to remove a large section of sheetrock when all that is necessary is better waterproofing of your shower!  Some may argue that the sheetrock is bad and needs to be replaced anyway.  The easy answer to that is that we are plumbers – not water damage repair techs.  It is not for us to determine what needs to be done to fix water damage.  It is us to fix the plumbing that is causing it.  When that is done, we can refer our customer to a suitable water damage company.  We do our job and let them do theirs.

So how do we diagnose this type of leak?  Let me preface the answer by saying that during any type of plumbing diagnostic, you want to eliminate a single cause at a time.  This means that everything you do eliminates only one possible cause.  Here is how you do it:

Typical Water Meter

First you make sure that no toilets are running, no sinks leaking and no water is being used anywhere in the house.  You check your water meter.  Most meters will have a small dial that detects even a small amount of water usage.  You can test this by turning on one of your hose bibs so a trickle of water is coming out of it.  Then look at your meter.  The small dial (usually round or triangle) should be turning visibly.  When you turn of the hose bib, the dial should stop.  If it continues to move, you have a “supply side” leak somewhere.  You can further narrow it down by turning off the main shut-off valve to your house.  If the dial keeps moving, your leak is outside, before the house.  If it stops, the leak is in your house somewhere (maybe the tub/shower).  You can narrow it down even further by turning of the cold supply to your water heater.  If the dial stops, the leak is on the hot side somewhere.  If it keeps going, it is on the cold side.

Let’s assume that the meter is not spinning, so we know it is not a leak on the supply side of your plumbing system.  The next thing to do is start from the bottom up.  Get a ladder and put it under the wet spot in your ceiling.  This will make it easier to hear if water is dripping onto the sheetrock.  You may even want to poke a small hole in the sheetrock with a small screwdriver and let any standing water drain into a bucket.  That way when the leak starts it is easier to see.

Plug the tub drain, fill up a 5 gallon bucket (from a different source or water) and pour it into the tub, being careful not to splash.  Do that a few times until your tub is holding a fair amount of water.  Does that recreate the leak?  Don’t forget that you need to give it some time for the leak to show up.  If that does create a leak, the problem is with the “strainer” itself.  It may be loose, or the putty (or whatever sealant was used) wore out.  Often this can be fixed by loosening the drain, packing putty between the strainer and the tub and retightening.

If that does not create the leak, pull the plug on the tub and let the water drain.  Does that do it?  Again, give it time for the leak to show up, this is not a 5 minute process.  If the leak shows up them, it is the drainage plumbing.  In this case, removal of sheetrock will likely be necessary to be able to fix the problem.  If it does not recreate the leak, you have eliminated the drainage and can proceed to the next step.

Next, turn on the water to your tub.  Since you have already eliminated the drains, if the leak shows op now, you know that the problem is either in the faucet itself or the pipe going from the faucet to the tub spout.  The easiest thing to do now, is to take off the shower handle(s) and trim and see if you can see anything happening in the wall.

Next, turn the shower on.  Be careful to make sure that the water is going directly to the tub and not splashing the walls.  If the leak shows up now, it is either the pipe between the faucet and the shower head, or the shower arm itself.  The latter is the most likely.

If you still have no results, it is time to start splashing around some water.  Try running water over the overflow cover, the shower handles, different areas of your tile, etc.  Splash water on your shower doors too – anywhere where water might go when showering needs to be exposed to water.  The trick here is to do everything one at a time, so that when you get a positive result, you know what caused it.

If you have followed these procedures to the letter, your plumbing leak will be found by the time you get to the end.  Just be patient and keep your eyes and ears open.

Now for the spoiler – Can you guess what the majority of upstairs plumbing leaks is caused by?  By far, the most common cause is a problem with the tile.  Usually something that can be fixed by simply applying tub and tile caulk to the defective area.  It’s kind of silly to remove sheetrock from your ceiling to diagnose that your tub needs to be re-caulked, don’t you think?

Stay tuned for more plumbing info and tips to come soon!  As always, I am available to answer any questions you may have via comment, the contact page or our plumbing forum.

Thanks for reading.

Hello, Steve here.  Welcome to Plumbing Info.org.  If you don’t know who I am yet, you may want to read my “About Me” page before reading further.

So, I guess the question is: why does this website exist?

Well, you can relax, . . . → Read More:]]>

Hello, Steve here.  Welcome to Plumbing Info.org.  If you don’t know who I am yet, you may want to read my “About Me” page before reading further.

So, I guess the question is: why does this website exist?

Well, you can relax, because, unlike 99.9% of the websites on the net, I am NOT trying to sell you something.  You will find no affiliate links anywhere on this site.  The ONLY way I can make a penny off this website is if:

• You choose to click on one of the sponsored links
• You choose to make a donation

Now that that’s over, let’s get down to plumbing!

Spending a lot of time at home over the last couple of months has given me a chance to reflect on my career and all that I have seen in my more than 15 years as a plumber.  When I look back on it, I realize that the most important aspect of my career was my customers.  Every job I did was dependent upon the interactions between me and my customers.  The best and most satisfying work I ever did was when I was working for people that were knowledgeable and capable of making informed decisions.

Why is that?  There are several reasons.

• People that know what’s going on keep me on my toes.  Someone who knows nothing about plumbing knows nothing about what I am doing.  I can be lazy and “cut corners” and they would not know that difference.
• People that know plumbing appreciate the value in what I do.  It is nice to be appreciated by a customer that knows that the work I did was top notch.  I can sense when someone knows that they got quality work.
• People who know the game cannot be taken advantage of.  When a person has had bad experiences with plumbers, it is all that much harder to get them to trust an honest plumber.
• People who know their plumbing system are far easier to communicate with.  I cannot count the number of times when I arrived at someone’s house and had them tell me “the trap is on the roof” or something equally unhelpful.  It seems like it takes forever to get them to a point where they can actually give me information that I need (“the toilet is backing up into the bathtub”).

I actually have another reason for starting this website.  The long and short of it is that it is not possible for me to interact with people in a service environment for so many years without actually caring about how they are treated.  I have spent so many years, watching what some other “plumbers” did or seeing the work they left behind and shaking my head with disgust.  In the past, I had the option of outperforming them and making them look silly.  That is no longer an option, however.  I hope that this site will actually do more than that.  I hope that I can affect thousands of people, who will, in turn learn what they need to make sure that the bad plumbers and the cheats fail and the plumbers who worked hard to get where they are, by giving quality work at a fair price succeed.

So, why should you read this?  There are so many benefits to you being “in the know” that I can hardly list them all, but I will list a few.

• You will only hire qualified plumbers
• You will only hire plumbers that do quality work (there is a difference)
• You will get the work you need done done correctly
• You will save money (lots of money)
• You will be able to choose what work you need to do now vs. what can be done later
• You will never be taken advantage of again
• You will have information that a lot of plumbers do not want you to know

There are many more, of course, but I will leave them up to you to discover.

Talk to you soon!

Steve

If you are planning on getting plumbing work done, or just have plumbing related questions, I am glad you found this site! I have over 15 years of extensive, residential and commercial new construction, remodel, and service plumbing experience, and I built this site to pass the knowledge from that . . . → Read More:]]>

Plumbing

If you are planning on getting plumbing work done, or just have plumbing related questions, I am glad you found this site! I have over 15 years of extensive, residential and commercial new construction, remodel, and service plumbing experience, and I built this site to pass the knowledge from that experience on to you.

If you are unprepared when you call a plumber, you can be in for a horrible experience. Many times, if you have the info you need about the problems you are finding, you may not need to call a plumber at all. Either way, you need the knowledge and tools to know exactly what is going on with your plumbing and how to best get it resolved. This site will get you there.

You get find the info you need a few ways:

• Hover over the “Categories” menu above to see the dropdown where you can choose what categories to browse.
• Do a site search, using the custom Google search box on the top right, just below the header graphic
• Check our sitemap which separately lists all the posts and categories by title.

As always, if you find the information useful, I encourage you to donate whatever you wish, by clicking on one of the “Donate” buttons located throughout the site. We proudly use PayPal, so you know your transaction is safe.

Looking for Toronto Plumbers – Try Roto-Rooter