Bathroom Leakage Repair in Ghana — Find It and Fix It (2026)
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Bathroom Leakage in Ghana — Four Sources, Four Fixes
Bathroom leaks come from the floor membrane, the shower wall, the floor gully, or a pipe. Each needs a different repair. Get the diagnosis right first — re-tiling a bathroom to fix what turns out to be a leaking pipe is an expensive lesson.
The Two-Day Test
Before anything else, run this. It costs nothing and settles the biggest question.
- Stop using the bathroom completely for 48 hours
- Watch the damp patch below
- Damp dries out, returns after someone showers → waterproofing failure
- Damp continues unchanged → supply pipe under pressure. Call a plumber, not us.
Find Your Source
| Symptom | Source | Typical cost |
|---|---|---|
| Damp spreads across whole ceiling below | No floor membrane | GHS 3,500–7,000 |
| Damp on the wall behind the shower | Shower wall membrane failed | GHS 1,800–3,500 |
| Damp directly under the floor gully | Gully seal failed | GHS 600–1,200 |
| Damp constant, bathroom unused | Pipe leak | Plumber |
| Damp only at the doorway | Threshold detail | GHS 400–900 |
| Black mould, no staining below | Condensation, not a leak | Ventilation |
The Root Cause in Most Ghanaian Bathrooms
No membrane under the tiles.
Tiles get laid straight onto the screed. It looks finished and works fine for a year or two. Then grout lines micro-crack, water enters the bedding, saturates the screed, and finds the slab. From there it follows any crack or service penetration into the ceiling below.
By the time a stain appears downstairs, the screed has usually been saturated for months.
Tiles are a finish. Grout is a filler. Neither is waterproof. The membrane underneath is the waterproofing — and in most Ghanaian bathrooms it was never installed.
The Correct Repair — Full Re-Waterproofing
- Lift tiles and remove saturated screed
- Dry the slab completely — this is not optional and takes days
- Repair cracks; seal around all pipe penetrations
- Correct falls toward the gully, minimum 1:80
- Apply waterproof membrane to the floor and up all walls a minimum of 150 mm — full height in the shower area
- Fleece-reinforce every wall-floor junction, the gully and the threshold
- Flood test — 24 hours, checked from below
- Re-tile over the cured membrane
Step 7 is the one that gets skipped. Once tiles are down you cannot see a defect and cannot fix it without starting again.
When a Localised Repair Will Do
- ✅ Leak clearly confined to the floor gully
- ✅ Failed silicone at the wall-floor junction
- ✅ A few cracked grout lines in an otherwise sound floor
- ✅ Threshold detail only
- ✅ Tiles sound, well bonded, no drumminess
Tap the floor tiles with a coin. A hollow sound means the bedding has failed underneath — at that point, localised repair will not hold.
Do the Ceiling Below Afterwards, Not Before
Repair the leak, then let the ceiling dry fully, then repair and paint it. Doing the ceiling first is the most common wasted spend on this job — it will simply stain again.
Book an Assessment
Free survey with moisture readings, identifying whether you have a waterproofing failure, a plumbing leak, or condensation — before we quote.
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