Any plumbers on here or if your dh/dp plumber can you look at this photo ? I can’t tell if we have a leak or if one of the kids made the shower over flow

[LemontreeTonic]

So couple of days ago woke up to these stains on the ceiling

since then we’ve had heating in seems ok

used big appliances seems ok

this is a bed room in a 3 storey house
above there is a bath room
sometimes dh isn’t very good at being on in emptying the plug filter thing

but the day before this happened he cleared it
but kids had used it two days before

so there a chance they’ve overflowed the water out of the tray

or guess there could be a leak ?

what do you think looks most likely ?

what’s confusing me why is there multiple stains

they were they before
they suddenly appeared

Im not a plumber but they’ll definitely be from the bathroom above,. If it’s an ongoing leak,the stains will get darker and spread. If it was a one off then it will start drying out and become lighter. You might need to get a plumber out to check.

I had this and got a plumber out and it turned out the sealant around the shower tray had gone.

Thanks I thought it’s odd how many spots there are

i suspect the kids do let the tray overfill

so I’m not sure if it’s sealant or overfill

guess I’ll have to run the shower and see if more appear

Bathroom was only done 3 years ago so be a bit suprised if the sealant was gone so fast

When we got our ensuite done the ceiling below collapsed after a few months. Guy came back and fixed it and it's been fine for years. He blamed the sealant!!!! We got spotting like you have on another ceiling and it was a leak from heating pipe. It was very similar to yours - water can travel horizontally and the leak may not appear directly below.

Yes I did think, maybe heating but jive had that on and no more marks
Something seems OK.....

So thinking either kids overflown it
Or sealant or leak underneath

I'm thinking I'll run the shower for a min or 2 and see if it leaks
See if more spots appear

Sealant. It’s always the sealant. Screwfix do I good plug unblocker. Use it regularly

Thank you for your kind advice

We got this from not properly tightening the plug filter after cleaning it. Took a couple of showers for it to come through but then got worse each time we used it.

OP, so check the sealant, but also test your shower. Turn it on, close the door and see whether there are any leaks - even a dribble out of the shower tray will need looking at. Also, after you’ve run it for some minutes, check to see if the water marks in the ceiling are worse. If you’re sure you’ve cleaned the trap and there doesn’t appear to be a leak, then see what angle the DC are using the shower head at - my DSis had this problem with her DGC: she thought it was a leak but in fact one of the DGC was putting the shower head so the water came out of the shower cubicle. Like you, she has water marks on the ceiling.

Did you have a hair trap in the shower drain. We had one that when you removed it it gradually unscrewed the waste pipe underneath until it came apart and caused a full on cascade below. It was a simple fix. But also needed to reeducate the girls who had been helpfully emptying the trap because their long hair often blocked the trap.

We also had a problem with the toilet waste pipe coming away from the loo which caused stains like that.

It may be worth checking all the pipe work. I remember having a chronic leak at work ( dental surgery) it turned out to be a crack in the waste pipe caused by the plumber using the wrong adhesive to join pipe work. The cleaning solution ( bleach based) caused a reaction between the plastic pipes and the adhesive and the joints all failed. Due to the regulations around dental chairs they had to use adhesive at the time. They have since changed the regs possibly because of the frequency of pipes failing.

We had similar ceiling stains. DS likes to sing and stamp in the shower (shower over bath) and all the thumping had loosened the connection from the drain (maybe the trap??) and also torn the sealant away in places. This has been going on for ages before the water marks actually appeared so you may have more of an issue than you realise.

We had to replace the sealant and screw all the pipework back together and have a heater on the bathroom for a while to dry all the floor out under the bath!