A buckled cracked or water stained floor or ceiling especially in your bathroom.
How to tell if pipes are behind a bathroom wall.
Peeling paint or wallpaper on your walls.
One of the tell tale signs of a water leak coming from a shower valve behind the wall are water stains.
A wall that is warped or stained for no apparent reason.
Make shallow cuts in the drywall.
Since water that leaks into walls never has a chance to dry out the walls will begin to give off a humid musty odor.
In cases where a leak behind a wall isn t visible you may be able to detect the leak using your sense of smell.
The basement is the place where the pipes are usually exposed and not behind a wall.
Musty smelling walls will often be accompanied by other signs of a leak e g discoloration.
The diy experts at stack exchange provide tips.
Drilling into a wall doesn t have to be a guessing game.
A vibrating tool with a circular blade will make nice clean sharp easily patchable holes without cutting so deep as to risk cutting the pipes.
If you have an upstairs bathroom you may notice dried water stains on the ceiling below the shower.
There is no way to trace the water pipe behind the walls with any certainty without using a hole in the wall.
How to fix a leaking pipe behind a wall.
There are easy and effective ways to know what s hiding in your home.
If none exists you will have to make one plus.
Most times shower valve leaks behind the wall are very slow.
It is possible to follow the water lines from the basement or crawl space to help determine the most likely path to sinks tubs toilets radiators and washing machines.
Try to look for corrosion and leakage since these two are the best signs of a broken pipe.
And if it s behind a wall it never has a chance to dry.
When someone is showering you might see water dripping from the ceiling.
Therefore you will easily see if there s a leakage or anything wrong with them.
Old accumulated water from a leaky pipe tends to have an odor.
If you do hit a pipe.