How urgent is this leak from underneath my bathroom on the kitchen ceiling?

AFF8879

I just had a shower and came down to find this. It’s a small damp patch, barely moist to the touch and no drips etc. It’s underneath the width of the bathtub. A quick google search seems to indicate it could be anything from minor (broken seal etc) to more major...just working out how urgently I need to get the plumber round!

FreeBear

I'd say before you next have a bath.

For some, that would be months.

ThisIsWeird

You will most likely 'get away' with this one incident, other than a repaint likely being required once that water has drawn through the dust from the ceiling cavity and left a nice stain.

It will, tho', take a week or so to dry out fully, and if you give it a water top-up, you are very likely to start having bigger issues. 

Plasterboard is surprisingly good at coping with a quick wetting, but will swell and fail with longer-term dampening.

How likely it is to cause further issues if you have another bath will come down to the source of the leak. If it's from the waste pipe, then 'problem' - you cannot avoid it. If it's from pretty much anything else - getting past where the taps go through the bath, or past the seal around the bath, or from water going over the bath edge (careless...), then it should be perfectly avoidable. 

Unless you know where, then it's a risk. Any idea?

What sort of bath panel does it have? Can you remove it for a looksee?

The last person I tried to help (at long range) with such a leak, it turned out to be a poor seal between the recently-fitted bath-shower deck mixer and the bath's top surface. The shower water ran down the wall and on to the bath top edge, as it does, but then went unbeknownst under the deck mixer and through the holes the pipes came up. The installer hadn't fitted the proper gasket...

Unlikely to be the case here, if it's been ok up until now. Just have a really close look at the bath-to-wall seal, how the shower screen or curtain sits and seals, whether there's water coming down the outer bath panel - that sort of thing.

HampshireH

Get your bath panel off and take a look (it gotta come of anyway). I recently had to replace the waste on ours when we had staining appear on the kitchen sealing. Was a very small leak but the floorboard directly below was cut away so water was directly hitting the plasterboard in the area. Quite an easy job. 

You shouldn't need a plumber if that's the issue. But you won't know till you have a look and determined where the water is coming from. I'd recommend doing the investigation work yourself then if you need to pay a plumber to just fix it as they aren't cheap.

ThisIsWeird

Post a photo, Aff?

housebuyer143

Everytime my bath leaked it was the waste that had broken. So take a look and see where is wet.
Wastes are very easy to do yourself but don't get a cheap one as they tend to just break, go for a £20+ one in my opinion. Never had a problem when using good quality wastes.

Bigphil1474

OP, we had similar issues a while back. For us, I found that it was the overflow in the bath - probably come loose or not sealed fully. Would have been a major pain to remove the panel, so I stopped overfilling the bath and it stopped. The line is probably where the water gathers under the bath and follows the least line of resistance. My guess is it's either a sealant issue or waste pipe. 

I take it it's on the outside line of the bath? Do you mean length of the bath, as that looks quite wide. What's the floor like above - it couldn't be something as simple as the shower curtain not tucked in?

maisie_cat

Many years ago I bought a professionally renovated house and had the same thing, it was small so I ignored it until the ceiling fell down.
The plumber had not connected the shower waste properly and the water destroyed the plasterboard ceiling.

ic

I had the same when I moved into my last house.  Looked under the bath and found who'd ever fitted it chose to connect the bath waste trap to the pipe with silicone sealant, rather than use the provided compression o-rings.  Fortunately they'd left the o-rings under the bath, so I just fit them and the problem stopped immediately.  Some tradesmen really are bodgers.

Jonboy_1984

 I spotted a tiny water mark in the corner of our flat and asked the neighbours above to check under their bath, they had a huge amount of moisture from a seeping tap joint from some botched work a few weeks earlier. Don’t waste any time investigating it.

Sistergold

A stitch in time saves nine goes a long way with lost leaks. So best solve the issue as soon as noted!