A leaking shower tray or toilet base: what is going wrong

Where the water is actually coming from: three usual places

The first place to suspect is the silicone joint where the tray or the toilet base meets the tiled floor or wall. Silicone has a working life, and in a wet room used daily it is usually years rather than decades. Once it shrinks, cracks, or peels away from one edge, water gets behind it during every shower and reappears at the base afterwards.

The second place is the tray or the toilet itself. Shower trays, especially older acrylic ones, can develop hairline cracks near the waste outlet or along a corner, often from someone standing awkwardly or from the tray flexing on an uneven base. A toilet leak at floor level is very often the wax ring or flange under the pan, invisible until the toilet is lifted.

The third and least common place is the floor structure underneath: a damaged waterproof membrane, a screed that was never sealed properly before tiling, or movement in an older joist floor that has opened a gap. This is the one that turns a small job into a larger one, and it is worth ruling in or out early rather than resealing the same joint three times.

What you can check yourself before calling anyone

Start dry. Wipe the area completely, run the shower or flush the toilet, and watch where the water first appears rather than where it ends up, since it often travels sideways along a grout line before it shows. A torch held at a low angle along the silicone bead will usually reveal cracks or gaps you cannot see straight on.

Press gently on the tray edge and on the floor tiles right next to it. Any give, flex, or a faint hollow sound points to something under the surface rather than a seal on top of it. For a toilet, put a hand on the base while someone flushes: a wobble that was not there before, or water appearing at the join with the floor rather than higher up the pan, points to the seal underneath rather than a supply pipe.

Check the supply side too. A leak from the flush pipe, the isolation valve, or a loose flexible hose can run down the back of the pan and pool at the base, mimicking a seal failure. It is worth eliminating before assuming the worst, since it is the easiest of all these to fix.

• Wipe dry, then run water and watch where it first appears
• Check the silicone bead along its whole length with a torch
• Press the tray edge and nearby tiles for flex or hollow sound
• Wobble-test the toilet while it is flushed
• Check the supply pipe, valve and hose above the pan

When it is just the joint and when it is something bigger

If the water only appears after showering, stops once the room dries out, and you can see a visible gap or crack in the silicone with no flex in the tray or floor, this is almost always a resealing job. It is quick, cheap, and worth doing as soon as you notice it, since a failed seal left too long lets water keep reaching whatever is underneath.

If the toilet rocks slightly, if water appears at the base with every flush rather than only occasionally, or if the tray edge itself flexes when pressed, the seal underneath is the more likely suspect, and no amount of fresh silicone on top will fix that. At that point the tray or the pan needs to come up to replace what has failed beneath it.

Our silicone sealing service, from 45 € per job, covers the straightforward case: old seal cut out, surface cleaned and dried properly, new bead run in. If the tiles around the tray also need attention afterwards, tiling work starts from 35 €.

When it is more serious than a joint or a seal

Take it seriously if the floor around the tray or toilet feels soft, springy, or visibly dips underfoot, particularly in an older wooden-floored house in Kalamaja or Nõmme. That suggests water has been getting into the subfloor for a while, which is a different job to a reseal and worth having looked at before it gets worse.

In a panel building flat, a damp patch that keeps returning despite a sound-looking seal can also mean water tracking from a neighbour above or through an old membrane, in which case it is worth raising with the korteriühistu as well, since the source may not be in your flat at all.

For the toilet specifically, a wax ring or flange failure means lifting the pan to replace what is underneath, refitting it properly, and resealing. This is not a job to leave, since water repeatedly reaching the floor structure under a toilet causes far more damage than the same amount reaching a tiled shower floor. Our toilet repair and fitting service, from 60 € per job, covers exactly this.

What a job like this usually costs

A straightforward resealing of a shower tray or toilet base is charged from 45 € per job, and is normally the cheapest way to deal with a joint that has simply worn out. If a section of grout or a few tiles need lifting to check what is underneath first, that is hourly work from 39 € per hour, minimum one hour, with a call-out of 25 € within Tallinn deducted from the bill if the work goes ahead.

Lifting and refitting a toilet, including a new seal at the base, starts from 60 € per job. If the tray itself turns out to be cracked or the subfloor needs attention, that is enough scope that we would look at it in person or from photos first and give a fixed quote valid for 30 days, so you know the figure before anything is opened up.