Sorry for wall of text but this requires a lot of context. I recently bought an old home (1870). The former owners did a range of renovations, some good, some kind of suspect. This includes a 2nd floor bathroom renovation, including install of tub, shower and tile. The tile job is not amazing and there are already cracks in some grout near the top of the shower unit.Recent events have led me to believe there is a leak in one of the walls (or floor?) adjacent to the bathroom. The bathroom is right above the kitchen. One of the interior walls perpendicular to the length of the house is in the exact same spot on the main and 2nd floor; it is a bathroom wall on the 2nd floor and a kitchen wall on the main floor. This is the only wall I will refer to here. To my knowledge all the original plumbing has been replaced with copper piping.Last week after having a fairly long shower I thought I heard a hissing noise from the wall upstairs. I could not hear it in the bathroom, but in the alcove on the opposite side of the bathroom. It was so noticeable that I inspected around inside and outside, but found nothing obvious. The sound was localized to the alcove upstairs adjacent to the bathroom. However, just before leaving for work, I noticed one of the kitchen pot lights dripping water. This was not gushing water, just a slow dripping. In light of this, the hissing made sense and I immediately turned off the water main. This particular pot light is about 5 feet away from the wall in question, and there is actually another pot light closer to the wall but that one had no dripping. I removed the pot light, dried the water and set up a blower blowing right into the light hole to dry out anything wet up there. The hissing had stopped upstairs as well. This all led me to conclude that there was a pipe leak.I had a plumber come investigate that same day. Nothing we could do would make the hissing come back or show any signs of a leak whatsoever. With the water main on, the meter was not moving at all. We turned on every tap and the shower for five or ten minutes, no hissing. The plumber’s opinion was that maybe I got a lot of water on the bathroom floor and cracks in grout could have led to it leaking down. I remain skeptical of this explanation because I do not believe there was much water on the floor, and it doesn’t explain the hissing. He advised me to monitor it and try to determine more about the circumstances that cause the water or the hissing.I have continued to monitor and I also put strong caulking in the bathroom anywhere where horizontal/vertical surfaces meet. No further water or signs of water have appeared anywhere near the pot light.Two things of note have happened. One is that I discovered a wet patch in the top of the wall in the kitchen about a week after the initial leak. Maybe 12 inches wide by 8 inches. I only discovered this because I decided to do some scraping in anticipation of painting on Friday. The walls are plaster and lath. There is some cracking in the plaster at the top of the wall where it meets the ceiling, but that area was not wet. The wet patch is about 2 feet below the ceiling. While it seems obvious to assume this was related to the ‘leak’, this patch is not exactly close to the pot light and is actually a foot and a half below the ceiling. I am sure it was wet because there was wallpaper under the paint and it was very easy to tell which wallpaper was damp vs. dry. After scraping the paint to determine the extent of the wet patch I also blasted it with the fan for hours to dry it out.The second thing is that last night, for the first time since the initial incident, the hissing returned after I had a shower. This time I noted the following: - the hissing is a constant, white-noise type sound, though it does have intermittent sputtering aspects to it; - when I approached the wall where the sound is coming from, it seemed that my weight on the floor has an effect on the sound and sometimes even stops the hissing; - I shut the water main off and the hissing persisted; - with all taps off, and the water main on, the spinner was not spinning and the meter was not moving, not even slowly; - no water appeared in the pot light area; - the now-exposed “wet patch” did not get wet; - the hissing eventually went away after maybe twenty minutes; - to be safe I shut the water main off and went to sleep. This morning, no sign of water anywhere and no hissing; - however, after my shower this morning, the hissing resumed again, no sign of water anywhere;I left the water main off and went to work. There is no other device in the vicinity of the hissing sound that explains the noise. No part of the HVAC was on when I was gathering information last night. There is nothing electronic that could be making the noise. If relevant. it has been quite hot and humid lately (I am in Toronto area).Does anyone have any idea what could be going on, or what I should do next? Please comment if you need more information.TL:DR, I think I have a water leak based on wall-hissing following showers despite minimal corroborating evidence, am I being paranoid and what do I do next? via /r/DIY https://ift.tt/2urpIUe
