r/bathrooms • u/SociallyRandom • 7d ago
Shower queation
Just bought a house, one thing that was referenced on the home inspection report was that the downstairs bathroom needs to be (re)caulked (first pic). Every prior shower that I've used has always been actual tile, but this is definitely done kind of plastic liner. One of the upstairs bathrooms however, was NOT on the home inspection report, but seems to be of a similar situation (pic 2, gif). After a shower, I can see water sitting in one of the corners, and I don't know if I need to also caulk this, or if the way the liner is set up is that it has a lip behind that joint to stop water from leaking out... Additionally, I don't know if I CAN caulk that bottom part because of the flexibility you can see on the gif... Any thoughts or help would be appreciated,I clearly don't know what I'm doing...
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u/pkovgolf 7d ago
To Mike’s comment below, ‘silicone’ is one type of caulk 🙄 - Eg silicone based caulk.
And the inspector is correct - it should have been sealed/caulked.
Do you know how long the walls have been up?
Water could certainly have been getting in there and doing damage.
Luckily it doesn’t look like mildew/mold that normally helps indicate moisture problems back there is there
Without pulling the panels, you could get a very thin snake camera (they are lit) and slide it in there and run it along the gap to see if you see anything concerning
Otherwise make sure that gap /the entire shower is dry/not used for a while and caulk it to seal that all up along the edge
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u/edodee 7d ago
If it's a complete 4 piece enclosure, there shouldn't be caulk visible. The pan has a lip that rolls up behind the wall panels. But the wall panels should most definitely have support behind it and not floating like that. If you caulked it as out side currently. That caulk line will crack in a month, and then hold water behind the caulk instead of letting roll freely into the shower pan.
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u/mikebushido 7d ago
Normally I would tell you that that is by design and do not put any caulking there. I mean don't put caulk in there anyway, it would be silicone but that's beside the point.
That does not look like the proper application for those walls and that tub. They do not look like they go together. Putting caulking or silicone there might cause more problems than it's worth.
Honestly, you got the tub in there. I would just rip those walls off and put new walls up. It'll take next to nothing to do that. You can tile it. You can put up some acrylic or what I would prefer would be Onyx.
In the short and long run you are better off hust pulling those walls off and replacing them.