Building Movement
Although showers or shower baths may leak for a number of reasons, by far the most common cause of leakage is building movement:
a) As a building settles into its foundations
b) As a building moves naturally with hot and cold weather
Weakening or Cracking
This movement can result in weakening or cracking of grout, tile and floor/wall junctions within the shower or bath. This eventually allows water to penetrate beneath the surface of the tiles.
Waterproof Membrane Fails
Beneath the surface of the tiles there is usually some kind of waterproofing membrane designed to catch/stop water penetrating to surrounding areas. Unfortunately, these membranes are also susceptible to building movement, poor installation and chemical breakdown with age .Once this membrane has been breached, water is free to penetrate into surrounding areas and cause damage.
1. Do It Yourself the majority of the retail products available, even if applied correctly, will at very best offer stop gap solutions.
a) They usually only target one area in the shower or bath
b) Silicon based products tend to go mouldy within a short period of application
c) In general, most products will not withstand building movement
2. Re-Membraning this system involves the removal of tiles within the shower to access, repair or replace the current waterproofing membrane. While this system is effective, the obvious downside is that it can take 4-5 days, it can be extremely hard to find matching replacement tiles and, on average, is fairly expensive.
Although we strongly recommend our non-removal of tile system, we can perform a full retiling membraning service if required.
3. The Shower Repair Center "Diamond Seal™" System
In its simplest terms, we have designed a combination of specialised tools, products and procedures that allow our company to stop water on the surface of the shower cubicle or bath, 100% waterproofing the area without the need to remove tiles. This obviously saves a lot of time, money and hassle, in that each shower can be sealed in 2½ to 4 hours and is usable the next day.
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