"How much to fix a leaking shower" is a question I cannot answer with one number, because a leaking shower is three different jobs with three very different prices, and the words people use to describe them are the same. The cheapest is a tap or mixer repair at $80 to $180 plus parts. The most expensive is a failed waterproofing membrane, which is a renovation-scope job with no cheap patch that lasts. In between sits leak detection at $200 to $500+ for the cases where nobody can tell which of the first two it is. This page is here to help you work out which one you have before anyone quotes you or pulls a tile off.
The three leaking shower jobs and what they cost
| What is actually leaking | What you see | The job | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| The mixer or tap | Dripping from the shower head when off, or water weeping around the wall plate behind the handle | Tap repair: cartridge, washer or seal | $80 to $180 + parts per tap |
| The waterproofing or grout | Damp, bubbling paint or a stain on the other side of the wall or on the ceiling below, only after showers | Waterproofing failure: the recess redone properly | Priced within the reno scope, quoted on inspection |
| Cannot tell | Water somewhere it should not be and no obvious source | Non-invasive leak detection to find it first | $200 to $500+, repair quoted separately |
Job one: the mixer or tap is leaking
This is the good news version. If the shower drips from the rose after you turn it off, or the handle has gone stiff or loose and water weeps out around the wall plate while it is running, the fault is inside the tap itself. On a mixer that means the ceramic cartridge has worn or scored; on a two-handle set it is a washer, the seat under it, or the spindle seals. The water is leaking at the tap, on the tiled side, where it runs harmlessly to the floor waste. The repair is a tap repair at $80 to $180 plus parts, the cartridge or washer replaced and the wall plate resealed, and it is done in one visit without touching a tile. If the basin or bath taps in the same bathroom are also worn, doing them in the same visit brings the per-tap price down.
The one twist: a mixer that leaks behind the wall plate rather than in front of it can send water into the wall cavity instead of down the drain, and that starts to look like job two. If the weep only happens while the tap is running and stops the moment it is off, it is still a tap fault. Fix it promptly, before the wall behind it gets a soaking.
Job two: water is getting through the waterproofing
This is the one nobody wants to hear, so I will be straight about it. If water is showing up on the other side of the shower wall, in the room next door, in the hallway, on the ceiling downstairs in a two-storey home, or as a soft skirting board and mouldy carpet edge outside the bathroom door, the water is going through the floor or wall of the shower recess itself. The tiles are not the waterproof layer. The grout is not the waterproof layer. The membrane underneath them is, and when it fails, or was never done properly in the first place, every shower sends water into the structure.
The signs that point here rather than to the tap: the damage appears after showers regardless of which tap is used or how carefully; tiles in the recess sound hollow or feel loose; grout lines are crumbling or permanently dark; silicone at the corners has pulled away; and the leak does not stop when the tap is fixed. There is no dollar figure for this job on our price list because it is a renovation-scope job, priced on inspection once we can see the recess and what is under it, and it usually means the shower recess is stripped, the substrate repaired, the plumbing penetrations reset, the recess waterproofed again by a licensed waterproofer to AS 3740 with a certificate, and retiled. Our bathroom waterproofing cost page explains why that is the only way it is priced.
I know there are products that promise to seal a leaking shower without removing tiles, and re-grouting and re-siliconing will often slow a leak for a while. What they cannot do is repair a membrane that has failed underneath, and the water that has already gone into the framing keeps doing damage while the surface looks fixed. We see the cost of the second attempt often enough that I will not recommend the cheap patch as a permanent answer. If the leak is genuinely surface-level grout or silicone on a recess with a sound membrane behind it, we will tell you that, because it is a much smaller job. When the membrane has gone, there is no honest shortcut.
Job three: you cannot tell where it is coming from
A lot of shower leaks are not obvious. Water appears on a floor, a wall goes damp, and it could be the mixer body behind the wall, the shower waste and its connection under the floor, a supply pipe in the wall cavity, or the membrane. Guessing is expensive, because the wrong guess means opening a wall or lifting tiles for nothing. This is what non-invasive leak detection at $200 to $500+ is for. A thermal camera shows a hot water leak behind a wall as a warm patch. A moisture meter maps where the wall or floor is actually wet and where it is dry, which usually points at the source. Isolating the supply and pressure testing tells us whether a pipe is leaking at all. Plugging the shower waste and filling the recess tests the membrane separately from the plumbing. By the end you know which of the three jobs you have, the repair is quoted separately from the finding fee, and nobody has pulled a tile off on a hunch. Our leak detection cost page covers what moves that fee.
A quick self-diagnosis before you call
- Does the shower drip or weep when it is off, at the head or the handle? Job one, tap repair.
- Does water weep around the handle only while the shower is running, and stop when it is off? Job one, but fix it soon.
- Is water appearing outside the shower, in the next room or below, after every shower, with no drip at the tap? Job two, waterproofing, and it needs proper eyes on it.
- Is there damp or a stain and you genuinely cannot say which of the above it is? Job three, detection first.
Tell us which of those matches when you call. It changes what we bring and what we quote. If it is a tap, the price is fixed before we start. If it is waterproofing, we inspect and quote the recess as a renovation scope. If it is not clear, we start with detection and quote the repair once we know.
Why it matters to get this right
A dripping shower head is an annoyance and a small water bill. A failed shower membrane is a slow structural problem that gets dearer every month it is left, and a leak that is chased in the wrong place costs you the repair you paid for plus the repair you still need. The whole point of sorting leaking showers into three jobs is to make sure the cheap fault gets the cheap fix and the serious one gets fixed once, properly.
Leaking shower and not sure which job you have? Call Hills Plumbing & Gas on 0472 657 042 or start with our Bathroom Renovations service page for a recess that needs redoing, or our Leak Detection service page if the source is a mystery. Tell me what you have seen and I will tell you which of the three it is likely to be. QBCC licence 15243081.