Five years ago a friend and I made this master bathroom. The floor was pored with radient heat in it. This floor supports a toilet, a bidet and a sink. The walls are equipped with many shower heads so the whole room serves as a shower. So one can sit, shower, and shave!
The problem is that the floor leaks to the downstairs. The lower level bathroom has been is gutted for long time due to the leak. It seems to me when one takes shower water finds a path through a crack in the cement and is then following the radient heat tunnel. The water drips from the point where the radient heat exits the cement it drips to main floor bathroom.
How do I go about fixing this leak problem?
Best Answer
Seal the floor with a high quality penetrating sealant.
Another way to fix this would be to take up the entire floor and redo it, ensuring the floor is solid enough it won't bend and cause cracks to form. However, sealing it should work.
Keep in mind that such a leak may be behind the wall along a pipe to the shower head or some other place where a leak is possible. In that case it would follow the pipe back down and enter the subfloor via that route.
You can get a special camera at the home improvement store to look through a small hole to inspect for leaks rather than having to tear open the wall. This way you should be able to locate the actual path of the leak without having to tear up the bathroom in the process. If possible, enter the wall from an adjoining room rather than making a hole in the tiled walls of the bathroom. It's a bit easier to repair a small inspection hole in sheetrock than it is to replace a tile.
If you have grout that is not sealed then water can pass through the grout almost like passing through sand. Seal it.