Leaky Shower Floor

[HorsieGrl]

Our shower has been leaking a little ever since the home was purchased. It's a standalone, tile shower. We suspected it was leaking from the plumbing, but weeded that possibility out by plugging the drain and filling up the shower floor some with water from a nearby tub, so the water in the shower was never on. It did indeed leak. There is some cracking in the tile grout. Went over those areas with silicone. Still leaks. There are some small cracks in the grout around the little floor tiles. Do you think the leaking is from that? Or is it possibly related to the drain or shower pan? Just trying to figure out the best route before I spend a bunch of time messing around with the tile, when it's possibly something else. Also, is there an easy way to reseal without having to regrout the whole thing. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[pushkins]

If you have plugged the drain and added water to the floor and it leaks then I hate to say it but the shower pan is faulty and needs to be removed and redone.
The anatomy of a cement shower pan is as follows: Cement base........vinyl liner........cement base.......tile and grout.

Where is the water going that leaks out ?....is it dripping below the shower in a basement or crawl space etc...?

Grout does not and never was designed to seal or water proof shower walls or floors, it is designed to shed most of the moisture to the drain, moisture that absorbed into the grout is directed to the drain by the vinyl liner between the two layers of cement. If it leaks then simply there is no liner or the liner has holes in it. Unfortunately there is no way to fix this without removing the entire shower floor and restarting from scratch.
There are a couple of new ways to construct showers....Wedi > foam panels and floor coated with cement installed as a water proof system then tiled, Schuter systems> foam panel floor drywall walls with a water proof membrane glued over the top then tiled or the old cement floor with backer board walls then tiled over.
IMO the Wedi is the best followed very closely by Shluter and then a very distant last is the old cement floor style. The first two systems installed correctly are truly water proof water does not penetrate below the tile glue even with cracked or damaged tiles you still have a water proof system. The cement system is a simple design with the vinyl liner however I see so many that are incorrectly installed and fail very early in their life spans.

[HorsieGrl]

Not good

Dang. Not what I was hoping to hear. The water is leaking into the adjacent toilet room on the floor under the trim. Not a lot, just enough to know somethings amiss.

Thank you so much for the reply.

[pushkins]

Sorry for the bad news, a cautious note I'd like to add is just cause you only see "a little" water, please don't dismiss this as a "small leak" more often then not what you actually see is a very small part of the overall leak, kinda like an iceberg.