Yet another problem sorted

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I have mentioned before that I have been renovating an old property. I couldn’t find a plumber who was willing to come in and do one room at a time (the toilet first, then the kitchen, and then the bathroom, installing fittings I had already, so no commission there either) so I had to do it myself. Well I did some research and set to work, and although I was no doubt considerably slower than the professionals I got it all done and working and was very pleased. But then when we were all here for an extended stay, Big One had a shower – something she always takes an inordinate amount of time over - and the result was a big pool of water on the bathroom floor! I assumed I must have screwed up somewhere. I was a bit paranoid about the drain, as I had to squeeze myself into a very awkward corner to fit all the pipes together and was afraid they were not lined up quite right, so I thought that might be the problem. Or maybe the push-fit inlet pipes were not quite pushed tight enough. We took the side panels back off the bath tub and I put the plug in the bath and tried filling it with cold water, then with hot. All seemed OK, no leaks from any of the pipes leading to the taps. Then I let all the water out to see if it was the drain, but again, no apparent leaks there either. So we laid patches of newspaper underneath every possible connection to try to identify the source of the problem, and eventually tracked it down to the bath taps themselves. The way they are made, the body has a wider base which is not actually attached. Although they look as if they are made all in one piece, in fact they consist of a pillar with a separate ring around the base which stands on the rim of the tub. Hope this makes sense – if this link works you should be able to see the taps here, not sure if these are the exact ones but they look very like them Consequently they work well as bath taps, but when combined with a shower over the bath, some of the shower water falls on the bath taps, runs down the body and because of the gap, trickles through to underneath the bath! If anyone has a brief shower, the puddle of water is only small and is out of sight under the tub, so it only became apparent when the shower went on for a long time! A bit of a design flaw in that scenario – and not at all connected to anything I had done - phew! I have now sealed all the way around each tap body with some clear sealant and had a shower to test the result – the floor is still dry so that’s a relief! Hope it stays that way.