From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
To: the initial landlord
ok, about the shower...
i've experimented with a few things. i think the issue is both pretty simple and sort of complex.
tightening
the drain hasn't seemed to have worked. it's actually been worse since
you tightened it the second time. you can still feel then water filing
up underneath the shower platform, and it still only leaks when you
actually step on to the shower platform (thereby pushing out the water).
i think this is still the root of the problem, but that seems like a
plumbing problem more than a fixture problem so maybe it's better to
focus on ways to better control the water flow under the platform.
i
understand that ripping the shower out is a time consuming, expensive
and bothersome process, and it's not something i really want to go
through, either. so, could i just deal with it? i think i could, in the
short run. however, the water is slowly eating away at the grout. the
grout has progressively moved from a few little holes to what is
becoming (but is not yet) a crumbling mess and it's spreading from the
one side to the entire base. if it doesn't eventually get fixed, the
grout is going to wash off altogether and the shower is going to flood
the whole basement.
so, this needs to be dealt with in some form or another.
however,
i've noticed something interesting. if a towel is pressed up tight
against the grout then the leaking has a delayed reaction that only
happens after the towel is removed. that may be short term, though; as
the grout crumbles further, the leaks may happen faster. for right now,
though, simply blocking the existing small holes seems to be enough to
stop the water. so, that seems to indicate that if the grout was
replaced with sealer (or sealer was just put around the grout) then the
water would drain properly on it's own.
in all honesty,
i think maybe there should have been sealer used there in the first
place, and not grout....or, maybe there should have been sealer put in
before the grout, or if there was then maybe it didn't take. i think
something like that is true.
so, that's an idea that
may prevent the need to pull the shower out. i don't know, however,
whether or not that's going to just create another set of problems
regarding water flow on the other side of the shower base.
i
just really need to reiterate that leaving this alone is going to
result in the grout slowly washing away and the water flooding out from
under the platform.
