Wood Windows

This is another project involving wood windows where the window sills have rotted to the point of developing holes into which water consequently channeled into the wall cavities below.

This bank of three Pella wood double-hung windows, and the two mulled double-hungs in the adjoining wall are the windows with the rotten sills as shown in the next photo.

It’s quite understandable that this type of damage would go unnoticed for extended periods of time. Most folks have much more to do than to go around inspecting their windows every year or two.

But the impetus to do so, if known…is potentially thousands and thousands of dollars in savings. So anyway, back to the job at hand, we carefully removed the jamb assemblies from the rough-openings.

As you can see, we employed the use of a man-lift, which was obviously needed to access the openings from the exterior.

We were able to use it to retrieve the sash and the jamb assemblies, and carefully lower them to our somewhat impromptu shop area that we had set up below.

Since we really never know the full extent of what we are going to find when we start pulling window assemblies out of walls…we come equipped for just about anything. Many people might be surprised with how tooled up each of our vans are.

And so we repaired the various wood window components as needed, as in milling (on-site) new sills and jambs & exterior trim components as needed. This is one of the skills we possess. And while some will ask if it isn’t less expensive to replace them with new windows…and while the answer sometimes is yes, it’s helpful to remember that (for example) this particular line of Pella windows are no longer made, so replacement is not always a viable option when it’s important that the windows in a house match.

While the windows are repaired, we have others back up on the man-lift to address those ramifications related to the hole in the window sill. Now technically…a “sill-pan” would be considered by some to be part of a flashing system. And indeed, a sill-pan would have kept this subsequent damage in the wall below from occurring. And I can assure you that there is a growing chorus of construction related folks who would scoff at the notion of installing windows without sill-pans.

But even now, as of this writing, many years since we completed this project…sill-pans are still not used in the majority of window installations. Although high end construction would probably be an exception to that ascertain, I do suspect that it’s just a matter of time before general building-codes will require it in regions with weather patterns such as ours in the Willamette Valley.