Hello everyone, I have been extremely busy with the new office, our second location (yay!) and not able to post lately with all the running around plus kids’ school but here I am and I will answer an important question, you want to remodel your bath in Houston or Dallas and you find a reputable remodeling company and they come to your house and tell you, you have a leaking shower and it must be addressed before remodeling your bathroom, why are there so many leaking showers in Houston, Dallas or everywhere in Texas?
Well there are many answers but the most common leaks we see are coming from under the tub and I will try to answer those. In August of 2022 we finished a shower tub conversion and a whole bathroom renovation in Houston for a very sweet elderly couple and the husband asked us to pull a plumbing permit before the project started, my project manager and I almost jumped in joy.
Many homeowners are not interested in permits because of the added timeline/cost and they almost never ask for a permit. This results in two things, an unproperly fitted shower liner that has a drip leak that you can’t see for weeks (much longer after project is completed) or a shorter shower liner than what the 2012 international building code requires which takes even longer to show, sometimes years but nevertheless it rears its ugly head at some point.
City inspectors check for those two things and give your contractor the green light to proceed with the bathroom renovation. Pulling a permit is the cheapest way of getting your contractor’s job checked by a third set of eyes.
Unfortunately if you are not in city limits you are NOT required to pull permits in Houston area, this results in a general lack of knowledge of permits by general public. Many homeowners don’t even know it’s an option.
Ask your contractor to pull a permit and if they tell you it’s not necessary, don’t just walk, RUN the other direction.
Thanks for reading
Nadine Gol
