How do I seal my shower escutcheon plate to prevent it from leaking?

Question

I have a leak that's going from my upstairs bathroom tub/shower to my downstairs bathroom ceiling. The leak occurs only when someone is using the shower or tub. I had someone open up the ceiling and inspect was going on from below. A PVC pipe was found to be leaking and was repaired. I proceeded to re-grout all the tile where water may be wanted to go through the tile. I also re-caulked, using silicone, the corners of the wall where the tile and the tub meet.

That pipe no longer leaks, but amazingly, I appear to still have some leak somewhere else in the ceiling.

My shower head is detachable like a wand. I detached it and began applying water in various areas to see if I could reproduce the leak. I think I found that when I apply it on my escutcheon plate, it appears to reproduce the leak. I have a small hole there that I discovered in the grout, perhaps 2 mm thick. I am thinking to apply silicone to seal the plate. It is currently flush against the wall, and with the exception of the 2mm thick hole, I see no gaps. There is no silicone however, I suppose this was never sealed.

When researching how to silicone seal this, I found that some people recommend opening it up and putting plumbers putty, something I'm not sure is necessary in my case. I am planning to apply the silicone.

When applying silicone to the escutcheon plate, some people recommend putting it only on the top area where the plate meets the tile wall, where water would flow down into on top of the plate from the top of the shower. I suppose the rationale is that if water gets stuck there, it may somehow escape into the shower down the tile, rather than behind the wall. I'm not sure though.

Should I seal only the top 3/4 circumference of the plate, or should I seal the whole circumference of the plate?

Answer 1

You should only seal the upper arc (clock face analogy: 7 through 12, to 5, leaving the 6 position open).

You can seal behind the escutcheon. in the plane of the tile (bridging the actual wall penetration), at the 7-6-5 position. there should remain a small gap at the bottom of the escutcheon cover plate and the tile.

Answer 2

I had a similar problem -- I put in two tile showers, and I didn't want water to leak down behind the trim ring or even have steam from the shower get inside the wall. Considering how much labor we expend to prevent water from getting into the floor or walls of a tiled shower, it didn't make sense to me to leave a 6" diameter hole under the trim ring or one around the shower head tube. The latter I took care of with grout, but I thought I'd post photos of what I did with the valve, since I didn't find anything like it online.

The trim ring does have a piece of adhesive foam around the inside, like weather stripping, where it sits against the tile, but I didn't want to have to count on that to keep water and steam out indefinitely.

What I did was cut a circular gasket a little smaller than the trim ring out of a piece of shower pan liner, available at big-box stores for about $5 a yard (5 feet wide) (or they may have a scrap for less). It's 40 mils, just under 1/16" thick, so it's pretty sturdy.

I cut a hole in the center just the size of the valve, so it would fit snugly over it. I also cut a small X at each of the two trim-ring mounting screws, and I cut a V notch at the bottom, so that any water that got behind it could drain out.

After test-fitting, I removed it and applied a bead of silicone caulk all around it and a little in from the edge, stopping short of the V notch.

Then I pressed it in place. When the caulk dried, I installed the trim ring, with its internal weatherstripping, secure in the knowledge that that wasn't my only line of defense.