The flashing for my home's window comes up short.
Earlier, I blogged about my leaky living room window that drips water from the drywall above whenever there is a hard, driving rain. In that post, I also mentioned an excellent story by Wall Street Journal reporter Nancy Keates, who is having a brand-new home built. In that story, she mentioned how every single window in her home was installed without flashing. She wrote that this is a recurrent problem with brand-new homes and that it can cause severe damage in a house.
I wonder if I have the same problem -- if all of my home's windows have been installed with improper flashing. If so, I could have a mess on my hands.
It turns out that I was finally able to get a contractor to look at the window today. (Many area contractors had deemed it too small a job for their time.) After removing the siding from around the window, my contractor called me over to take a look. It turns out that the window's flashing was done poorly -- the waterproof tarpaper that is supposed to keep water and condensation from seeping into the walls stops about a full half-inch above the window (instead of running flush with the window), providing a fairly large area for water to get in.
The contractor reflashed the window, but he suggested that I file against the builder through New Jersey's 10-year home warranty program, which should still cover my 6-year-old home. (It's likely that all the windows in my home were installed improperly, he says.)
Good luck, I think. I had a state inspector look at the window at least a year ago, and he deemed that the water leakage wasn't the builder's problem. (He only examined the window from the inside, and didn't pull up siding, etc.) Of course, I had first contacted the builder (which is a small, local builder) when the window began leaking a year after we moved in, but of course, he and his partner had no interest in our problem.
My contractor was nice enough to take photos for me today (even taking one with a yard stick in place to show how short the tarpaper comes up), which I plan to send to the state. But I am not expecting huge results -- it seems difficult to get the state to respond to home warranty problems. But, we'll see.
After working on my home, the contractor is stopping by my neighbor's house, which was constructed by the same builder. She has a similar problem with her sliding glass doors, which have a slow leak above them. I suspect that the contractor will find that the door was also installed with improper flashing. I think we have a watery trend on our hands.—Lauren Baier Kim