Help! Water coming through floor!

Ruby_Shoes_2

Hello

We bought a house around 2 weeks ago and are in the process of moving in. Yesterday we noticed that the carpet in the dining room is soaked through starting apparently in the middle and the wet is now covering pretty much the whole room. It is so wet it squelches!

The house is 1920s and we are arranging quotes to have damp-proofing installed and a new concrete floor laid in the affected room (we were doing this before the problem arose), the current floor is original quarry tiles covered with carpet.

We are pretty sure that the only water connected would be from the upstairs bathroom - would we be safe to just not use that bathroom and get the pipe fixed while the floor has been lifted before being relaid? We are on a limited budget as it is so don't want to pay unnecessary charges to get a plumber out!

Any help would be very much appreciated as I don't really know where to start!

vax2002

This is not damp, you have a leak somewhere

Ruby_Shoes_2

Yeah, I thought that but I was thinking is it safe to just leave it as it is for now as the builders who are re-laying our floors in a few weeks time will dig it out anyway and then we can have a proper look at it to see where the problem is coming from? Or would we urgently need to arrange for a plumber to come round and sort it. I dont know if a plumber would agree to dig up the floor :S

wallbash

Find stopcock turn water off

pimento

You could do what the previous owner of my last house did when his bath was leaking and put a couple of rolled up towels under the leak and replace the bath panel.

111KAB

I would contact your builder (new floor guy) now and get him to take a look. If he is any good he will identify the problem and at least dig down a small area to investigate. From the sound of things you are going to need a new carpet in this room anyway.

maninthestreet

Presumably this is not a solid concrete floor, but raised floorboards with a void underneath?

googler

You're not gonna be able to reuse the carpet, so bite the bullet and lift it now, along with any underlay. Shut off the water supply, let it dry out, and turn the water back on.

Isolate where it's coming from then get plumber to fix.

111KAB

maninthestreet wrote: »

Presumably this is not a solid concrete floor, but raised floorboards with a void underneath?

If quarries in 1920 house likely just to be laid on an ash/hardcore compacted base hence the damp proof course/solid floor requirement BUT sort out water problem before you start new works.

Ruby_Shoes_2

If I knew how to thank you all I would but I'm not very technical!

It is a quarry floor but I am going to go with the suggestion of getting the person doing the new floor to have a look. We may get some free advice! We have someone coming for a quote for the floor on Thurs so we will ask them. If they say we need a plumber then I guess we will have to bite the bullet and do so. I dare say we will be requesting a suspended wooden floor rather than concrete in case anything like this happens in future.

Good news is that since we have not used the upstairs bathroom the water seems to have stopped coming through and it is drying out nicely.

Pimento, that is really terrible, hopefully karma will prevail

Googler we've chucked the stinky carpet in the garden, sure the neighbours are delighted...

111KAB

Ruby_Shoes wrote: »

I dare say we will be requesting a suspended wooden floor rather than concrete in case anything like this happens in future.

Obviously sounds like a leaking pipe (waste or supply) below your existing quarry floor. Just find the problem and get it repaired and if you are worried about access in the future just put a conduit around the pipe/sleeve it then there should be no problems with a concrete/insulated floor as you will always be able to get at the 'problem' pipe in the future.