Defect / Water Leak Remediation

A Lake Oswego property near Westridge Elementary School.

The trees make it difficult to see the pertinent exterior wall and related windows, or even much of the house for that matter, but the arrow should give you the general idea.

As almost always, the windows are considered by our client to be prime suspect as to the culprit behind the water showing up…

…here. It’s a totally logical assumption. Windows are openings of a sort, and something is clearly open that shouldn’t be, if there’s a water penetration problem.

Occasionally there’s a flaw with the window that allows for water penetration. We’ve seen vinyl windows frames with holes in them, or wooden frames so rotten as to have created a hole channeling water down into the wall.

And almost any time windows are suspected, as they most often are, the windows become the recipients of a liberal application of caulking all around them.

It’s rarely known among homeowners, but the seam between the top of the window-frame and whatever siding there is, is actually designed as an evacuation point for water that somehow gains access past the siding above the window.

So caulking the areas that seem like the most vulnerable and logical place for water penetration is actually a mistake.

It’s almost always a flashing technique problem behind the siding that allows water to get into most of the walls we work on. Moisture barrier overlapped backwards from the way gravity requires. Like siding or roofing overlapping from below instead of from above.

It’s almost always something that simple, as it was here. We had need to only remove the siding, reapply the moisture barrier and then replace the siding. Fortunately, there was no water damage to the structural wall components.