Forum Archive

For several months I have been hearing the slow trickle of water behind the wall of my third floor bathroom in my Cobble Hill brownstone. I had Weiss plumbing come once to check it out and the guy basically leaned close to the wall and said ‘I don’t hear anything’. SInce I wanted to believe he was right, I let it go. This was about eight months ago. In my experience, however, it’s not a good idea to let small bad things grow into big bad things. I still hear the water so I tried again today with Gateway plumbing, mostly because the plumber from there sounds so smart on this sight. Once again, the guy stood close to the wall and said ‘I don’t hear anything’. Now I was beginning to feel like a character from Gaslight. It’s subtle but I swear it’s there. We went downstairs to the basement and, finally, he heard it. “Oh yeah!” he said, “it’s like a ‘Drip, drip’.” Sadly, he could not tell where it was, if it was in the pipe going up or the pipe coming down. His proposal–start opening walls–gave me a pounding headache. I did get his boss on the phone who sounded knowledgeable and agreed that ‘leaks can be tricky’. He is coming in two weeks to take a look. I won’t even mention what these diagnostic visits are costing. My point (and I do have one!), has anybody ever dealt with this situation before? Insight (and aspirin) welcome.