From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
To: the initial landlord
ok, about the shower...
i've experimented with a few things. i think the issue is both pretty simple and sort of complex.
tightening the drain hasn't seemed to have worked. it's actually been worse since you tightened it the second time. you can still feel then water filing up underneath the shower platform, and it still only leaks when you actually step on to the shower platform (thereby pushing out the water). i think this is still the root of the problem, but that seems like a plumbing problem more than a fixture problem so maybe it's better to focus on ways to better control the water flow under the platform.
i understand that ripping the shower out is a time consuming, expensive and bothersome process, and it's not something i really want to go through, either. so, could i just deal with it? i think i could, in the short run. however, the water is slowly eating away at the grout. the grout has progressively moved from a few little holes to what is becoming (but is not yet) a crumbling mess and it's spreading from the one side to the entire base. if it doesn't eventually get fixed, the grout is going to wash off altogether and the shower is going to flood the whole basement.
so, this needs to be dealt with in some form or another.
however, i've noticed something interesting. if a towel is pressed up tight against the grout then the leaking has a delayed reaction that only happens after the towel is removed. that may be short term, though; as the grout crumbles further, the leaks may happen faster. for right now, though, simply blocking the existing small holes seems to be enough to stop the water. so, that seems to indicate that if the grout was replaced with sealer (or sealer was just put around the grout) then the water would drain properly on it's own.
in all honesty, i think maybe there should have been sealer used there in the first place, and not grout....or, maybe there should have been sealer put in before the grout, or if there was then maybe it didn't take. i think something like that is true.
so, that's an idea that may prevent the need to pull the shower out. i don't know, however, whether or not that's going to just create another set of problems regarding water flow on the other side of the shower base.
i just really need to reiterate that leaving this alone is going to result in the grout slowly washing away and the water flooding out from under the platform.