Usually one of four things: a worn or missing bottom sweep, a failed silicone joint where glass meets tile, a door that has settled on its hinges, or a pan and curb pitched the wrong way. Accurate Glass & Mirror tracks these down by following where the water actually lands and when it shows up.
Start where water collects. The vinyl sweep under a swinging door and the wipe strips along its edges are wear parts, and they stiffen, curl or take a permanent set from resting against a jamb. Once a sweep stops meeting tile evenly, every shower pushes a little water beneath it. Sliders have their own version of this: the bottom track carries weep holes that drain back into the pan, and when soap and hair block them the track fills and spills over its outer edge. Both are inexpensive fixes, and both get blamed on the glass.
Silicone is a seam between materials that move at different rates, and it does not last forever. Run your eye along the base of a fixed panel, the wall channel, and every place glass meets glass. A joint that has pulled loose, gone chalky, or grown a dark line is feeding water into the wall side of the enclosure, where it turns up on the floor outside or on a ceiling below rather than inside the shower.
Hardware tells a story too. A door that has settled no longer meets its seal squarely, and the clearance opens at one end. Hinge tension and alignment adjust on most frameless hardware, so putting the panel back on its line frequently stops a leak without replacing anything at all.
Sometimes glass is innocent. A pan sloping toward the opening, a curb pitched outward instead of back into the shower, a tile lip carrying water past the seal, or a head aimed straight at the door will each put water on your floor no matter which enclosure hangs there. Handheld wands used near the opening do it as well. Timing is the tell: a leak that only appears when somebody rinses the walls is aim, while a leak arriving every single time is the enclosure or the pan. Describe what you are seeing and we will tell you which one you have.
Most of the time. Sweeps, wipe strips, seals and silicone are all replaceable, hinges adjust, and a slider track can be cleared and resealed. Glass gets replaced when an edge is chipped, when the opening has shifted enough that a panel no longer fits its space, or when an enclosure is old enough that hardware for it is no longer made.
It can be, but look at the pan and the drain first. A door leak puts water on the bathroom floor near the opening where you can see it happen. Water arriving one floor down usually came through the pan, the drain connection, or a wall behind the tile, and that is a plumbing and tile problem to solve before anyone touches glass.
We have been chasing water where it does not belong since long before frameless was fashionable. Tell us what you see and when it happens, and we will say whether it is a seal, a hinge, a joint or the pan. Call the Lodi shop at (201) 460-1313.
