Hi folks
14 year old house - single story concrete pad. Shower in bathroom is acrylic base and sides. It started to leak and get a bit spongy when stood on and noticed carpet through adjoining bedroom wall had a damp edge and skirting was swelling. Gave me a good excuse to redo the bathroom as it has been a maybe aye /maybe no project for a while.
Ripped it all out and the concrete pad beneath it was indeed wet and some of the framing along the bottom edge was damp so will let that dry out. The pad has the shower drain in the centre and it appears to have been patched into the main pad - about 20 inches square. - From what I gather, they box this section out during the original pour for the plumber to have a bit to play with re setting the drains etc. The main pad all dried out within the day but the patch is still pretty much soaking wet.
The patch isn't the best of efforts and appears to have been chucked down to a rough finish. There is also a big bit missing around one edge of the drain which gave me access to the area beneath the patch. Its full of 30 to 40mm rounds which makes sense but having scooped out a few handfuls of these I have found the edge of what I assume to be the DPC/ DPM - black plastic sheeting, with a nicely cut edge. It would appear the rounds are sitting on bare earth and the 1inch patch is spread on top of them.
I'm not sure if I'll put down an acrylic base or a fully tanked / tiled base and side but either way, they require some surface prep and gluing of bases down. Should I be cutting / chipping out the infill and repatching a membrane into place before filling back in or is this bit of damp fairly normal given how it's done this side of the planet?
Would appreciate your thoughts.
Ged