Failed Tub Caulking Leads To Shower Leaks

There are all sorts of things in bathrooms that can lead to leaks, from the wax ring on the toilet failing to the grout in old tile work wearing away. The simplest leaks to fix are those caused by caulk that has peeled out from the intersection of a bathtub along the walls or the floor. Sometimes it's over earnest cleaning of mold from the caulking that leads to its demise, but in all cases, it's no big deal. The key to recaulking any joint is doing a good job cleaning out the old caulk before you begin. If you've never done any sealing type work before, this might strike you as counterintuitive, after all, who wants to make the problem worse (look at that huge gap!) before making it better. But caulk on seals best on clean, smooth surfaces, which old caulking doesn't provide. First, a look at why caulking is important:

Run time 0:26



Now, telling you to clean out the caulk is one thing, doing it is another. Old silicon caulk is especially annoying to clean up because it retains its elasticity and adhesion to the original surfaces, meaning if it doesn't peel out, you'll have to carefully scrape it. Box cutters and putty knives are common tools for removing old caulking, while some guys prefer using an old credit card or bus pass that they can keep trimming down to keep the edge sharp and free of accumulated silicon. The most important part to clean is the opposite edges of the gap that is being filled. If the original sealant crept way up the side of the tub, wall or out on the floor, you might clean it up for aesthetics, but you aren't going to lay your bead out that far.

Run time 3:08



Mark does a nice job showing the process, in this instance, the joint between the tub and the floor. It's easy enough to figure out whether it's the floor joint or the wall joint that's leaking by being careful not to splash water on the floor when you shower. If you reseal the joints around the tub and you're still getting leaks when the walls or the floor get wet, odds are the grouting between your tiles has become porous. There are a number or products you can use to reseal old grout, but I suspect they are all more or less temporary solutions. And almost everybody does use a finger to smooth out the bead and push it into the gap, but try to keep the bead even when you first apply it.

If you've never handled a caulking gun, the little tab on the handle is the release that lets you pull the plunger back out so you can remove the old tube. If the tube doesn't want to come out, it's probably stuck to the inside of the nose piece, so assuming the tube is used up and you aren't worried about saving it, bash the nose into something hard in order to pop it free. You always pull the front of the tube out of the holder first, as the plunger piston never retracts all the way out of the tube at the back.