Brown patch on ceiling :-(

[geordieminx]

Over the past year 6 months there has been an ever increasing brown patch on our ceiling in the kitchen... yup, directly underneath the bath

Dh has taken the bath panel off a few times - put kitchen roll under to see where the water is coming from - but the paper is always dry, and the boards under the bath arent wet in any way.

He has re-sealed the bath twice for good measure but the brown water mark is getting bigger and darker.

Anyone know

a) what it could be/what could be causing it
b) anything we could do ourselves?
c) if not - what sort of "proffesional" would we call out - plumber? Builder?
d) would we be covered on house insurance?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated -dh is of the opinion that he doesnt know how o fix it so he'll just ignore it - unfortunately I dont think it'll be long before the blardy ceiling comes down

Leaky pipe under the floorboards?

When we had this it turned out to be the tiles which were a good few years old and had become porous. The water was seeping into the wall from the shower and running down into the floor. Underneath the bath etc was completely dry and we were mystified for ages.

This is sounding expensive....

Sounds like I need a plumber?

I would. You never know what is going on behind the scenes and better you find out now than when the ceiling falls down on you.

Good luck!

bump for any more advice

Aby more advice - can someone vlarify tthat its a plumber we need to call out - even if we dont know where the water is coming from?

Have you tried taking up the floorboards in the bathroom and putting kitchen roll under all the pipes you can see and reach? Then check after someone has showered. If you can find a leak then call a plumber to fix it yes. But I would try to find what was happening myself first so I knew what I wanted the plumber to do.

righto, we intermittently flooded our neighbour for a couple of years [mortifying] and had EVERYTHING replaced in an effort to stop it. shower, tiles, you name it.

it turned out to be that when the bath tap was running there was a teeny tiny leak at the top of the pipe, where the bits joined up. so every time we checked there was nothing to find, because it was literally one drop of water travelling down the pipe and drying up immediately the tap was off. this was graaaaaaadually filling a space in the ceiling (how they didn't notice the damp patch is beyond me) and then coming through.

so my advice is to run all your taps etc while checking under the bath, and run your fingers or some loo roll over the pipes, in case the problem only happens when the tap's on.

Check whether your house insurance covers 'trace and fix' for escape of water. We had a patch on the kitchen ceiling that turned out to be the shower, and the insurer paid (and arranged) for a plumber to track down the leak, and then fix the ceiling

Its going to be expensive isnt it... ((sobs)))

Aitch - you dont know of any plubbers in S Lan do you?

no, it isn't, not if it's just a leak like i'm suggesting. you may be able to seal it up yourselves.

these are the GENIUSES who finally found out what our problem was.

having had a ceiling ( part of) come down just before xmas last year.. I would poke a small hole in the ceiling in the middle of the brown patch .. and see if anything comes out ( ie water).. if it doesn't .. I'd then run the bath and see if anything comes out of the hole.

you could see if you can lift a section of floorboard up fron under the bath if you can get to it. and see if it's damp under the floorboards.

might be worth looking before you call a plumber.

also if water does come out of the hole that you poke it might save your ceiling

We had something like this with our upstairs neighbours. Turned out it was one pipe upstairs that had the leak. Water from there went down the outside of pipes leading to the bath and then came down onto our ceiling underneath were their bath was. (Does that make sense?) In other words, the source of the leak was about 8 feet away from where the brown patch was.

Insurance paid for the ceiling and the leak to be fixed.

Is it bad to consider waiting til the ceiling goes then claiming?

That's not so terrible. It would be a lot easier to find out what's going on up there without a ceiling

((((goes off upstairs to run a long bath))))

(((after she has checked poiicy details))))

(((Hopes claims department dont MN)))

this has happened to us twice - live in new house built with cowboy plumbers. in utility room it was caused by leaking pipe in ensuite above; and downstairs toilet by leaking pipe in bathroom above. covered by insurance in both cases - good news was that each room was redecorated as part of deal. They had to remove a small square of ceiling around the mark and then replace/solder the pipes - so required a plumber and then decorater. was simpler to do from ground floor - to do from 1st would have meant replacing tiles and the ceilings were no good anyway. we also have a small damp patch in lounge and garage, caused by showers leaking - this is much simpler and is just a case of resealing bottom of shower. sounds as if you need to check insurance and get a plumber.