Bathroom Waterproofing in Anna Nagar

Where bathroom leaks usually come from

Many older bathrooms in Chennai, including in Anna Nagar's established houses and apartment buildings, are built on a sunken slab: a recessed floor filled with debris or lightweight fill, with tiles on top. When the tile joints or pipe joints fail, water collects in that fill and slowly seeps into the walls and the ceiling below.

Other common sources are failed grout between tiles, gaps around floor traps and pipe entries, the joint where the floor meets the wall, and leaking concealed water pipes. The monsoon often makes things look worse because walls are already damp from the outside.

How we assess a bathroom leak

We look at the damp area, then check the tiles and grout, the floor trap, pipe entries and the floor–wall junction. Where needed we check moisture levels and test the drainage and plumbing to separate a waterproofing failure from a plumbing leak, because they need different fixes.

We won't promise a particular solution before inspecting. What's needed can range from regrouting with epoxy and sealing the trap and pipe entries, to removing the tiles and treating the sunken slab properly.

Repair options

Depending on what we find, the repair may involve:

• Raking out failed joints and refilling them with epoxy grout
• Sealing around floor traps, pipe collars and the floor–wall junction
• Removing tiles to treat the sunken slab with a waterproof coating, then retiling
• Referring a concealed pipe leak to a plumber if the problem is the plumbing, not the waterproofing