Soft floors around the tub: rot you can feel before you can see it

Bathroom floors fail quietly. The vinyl looks fine, the caulk line looks fine — but step slowly beside the tub and the floor gives, because months of small splashes worked through a failed seal into the subfloor. NSPIRE cites damaged flooring, and soft, spongy flooring around a tub or toilet is damage whether or not the surface has cracked yet. Walk every bathroom in socks or soft shoes and put your weight, deliberately, along the tub edge and around the toilet base; your feet find what your eyes miss. Then fix the water source first — new subfloor under a still-leaking seal is money spent twice. Where else do your walkers test with their feet? — Admin