Just replaced the bathtub spout in the upstairs bathroom. It caused a leak down to the ceiling below, that I have not attempted to fix for perhaps 10 years. I feared the worse, and thought perhaps it took tearing down the downstairs ceiling to get at the bad plumbing of the bathtub drain. With the bedrooms upstairs unused (kids are long gone), there was no hurry to fix this.
Yesterday, I finally attempted to locate the leak. It did not look like the leak was at the drain, but I gave it a light caulk just to be sure. Then, I took off the cover plate of the tub overflow outlet, and let out a curse. Damn plumber never did caulk around that outlet!
When my daughter filled up the tub for a soak, water would come up to the overflow outlet and leaked around the receptacle. Damn! I saw some soap scum there, so of course the water did come up that high.
When the caulk set, my wife did some cleaning up of the shower stall. Water came pouring down the ceiling below. DAMN!
It turned out that the bathtub spout leaked, when the flow was diverted up to the shower head. The O-ring of the spout has gone bad after 35 years, and water squirted back along the 1/2" pipe, and went into the wall and then down below.
All that water flow was covered up by the spout shroud, so went unnoticed. I had to use a saber saw along with a Dremel wheel to cut out the spout shroud. With the pipe poking out of the wall exposed, I saw that the DAMN plumber put no caulk there either.
The new spout has been installed. I am still waiting for the caulk to set before the real acid test, but this really looks like it. Fingers crossed.
While I shopped for the new spout, also picked up spackling compound and drywall tape to repair the ceiling later.
