Am I F**ked? Shower drain

[Mr.Bubbles]

So I bought my first home about 2 years ago and since then, I have figured out many things were done incorrectly. Newest thing is my shower is leaking. I read the MMM article about doing your own shower from scratch and watched many many videos on youtube about drains, redguard and tiling and finally came to the conclusion that i could attempt to find out why it was leaking myself. This is what I found once i removed the hair strainer thing (cover never actually screwed into anything) . Shouldn't there be another part to this drain? This is a ~1950 house but who knows when the tile went in.

[Jon Bon]

Well I really cant say, because I dont even know what I am looking at. However my shower plumbing never looks like that, so my advice is just wait for paddedhat to reply!

[Mr.Bubbles]

the pictures are literally just a hole in the center of my shower floor surrounded by tile theres like 2 visible places to put screws but thats it.

[Cali Nonya]

I have owned older houses, and that just looks like an old drain.

You say the shower is leaking, but you need to specify where you are seeing water leaking from, is water coming out into the floor from under the pan?  Is your house concrete slab, pier & beam?  Single or two-story?  A little bit more information please.

[Spork]

I have owned older houses, and that just looks like an old drain.

You say the shower is leaking, but you need to specify where you are seeing water leaking from, is water coming out into the floor from under the pan?  Is your house concrete slab, pier & beam?  Single or two-story?  A little bit more information please.

This.

I was absolutely convinced of a leaky shower pan only to find a leaky caulk joint well above the pan.   Water can sometimes be a bitch to trace back to its source.

[Mr.Bubbles]

single story house on a slab, seeing water on the hallway base boards that backs up to the back of shower (no pipes on that wall) tiles all look like there in good shape but could be grout issues, stopped using the shower for almost a month and no more moister. All the shower drains on youtube show that there should be a piece that should come out to at least the tile edge but its just a hole (currant strainer just sat on the edges of tile).

[john6221]

My basement shower is similar. The previous owner tiled over the slab but of course didn't worry about the slope of the tile, and over time the grout has also degraded. When anyone showers I can see water on the other side of the wall in the laundry room. I'm sure that all of the bottom plates of the walls are rotted.

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[Blatant]

I live in a slab house and had something similar happen. It was a bad P-trap, where the shower drain drops into the slab.

You could likely access it visually by cutting out a piece of drywall on an adjacent wall to have a look.

[paddedhat]

This sucks, and I doubt that it's going to be an easy fix. My guess is that there is a failure in the shower pan, but I could be way off. I would be pretty concerned if you are seeing wet floors in adjacent areas.  You pretty much can't come up with a more successful way to create a moldy mess hidden in the walls. I would submit the pics. and your concerns to the experts at the john bridge tile forum. There you will find pros. that deal with problems like this all the time. Good luck.

[geekette]

There's a common misconception that grout keeps water from passing through.  It doesn't.  Your problem lies elsewhere.  The John Bridge forums are to tile what MMM forums are to money.

[BTDretire]

I hope to have attached a picture with three arrows.
If the pipe itself is not leaking, could water get in at
any of the three points marked.
The arrows mark what I think is a transition from one
material to another.
  Can you put a good plug in the hole in the center and
then put water in the shower, this would tell you if the pipe
is leaking or if it is water getting in outside of the pipe
 and getting into the pan.

[lthenderson]

I can think of three cases where I've fixed a "leaking" shower by replacing cracked vent stack boots on the roof. In other words, the shower wasn't leaking but water was running down the vent stack near the shower and making the homeowners think that it was.

I assume since you know it is leaking, there is something down below, presumably a ceiling that is showing signs of water damage. The best way to figure this out it to access the shower drain from below and see what you see. It may mean cutting an exploratory hole in the ceiling below. But once you know where the water is coming from, there will be lots of advice on here and other sites as to how you can fix it.