Water Damage

Lake Oswego, on the lake. The 2nd story master bedroom has three sets of very custom arch-top double-entry steel sash doors in wood jambs with Juliet Balconies.

As you can see from the first photo, these openings do not have any significant protection from the elements, so all the door assembly components are going to be seriously tested.

And even though these doors have aluminum interlocking thresholds with water-return weep-hole systems incorporated into their design, they are sitting on a wood sill, and the wood-sill’s sitting on…

…a steel-plate for reasons that must have something to do with the masonry structure of the house. As you can see by this photo, the bottoms of all the jambs had incurred some water damage.

So besides replacing the water-damaged vertical jamb-legs, we also replaced the original damaged wood-sills with pressure-treated versions, over the top of which we provided & installed new aluminum sill-covers, threshold-pans and new thresholds. We had these shortened samples cut and placed here to show our client a cross-section of the system we were proposing.

But before installing the pressure-treated wood sills, we covered the steel plates with a sill-pan of sorts, made of self-adhesive flashing membrane for extra protection against water penetration into the house, more separation from the steel surface for the wood-sill, as well as protecting the steel from the potential corrosive effects of moisture.

As a general rule of thumb, we do not like to cut-off the bottoms of jamb-legs and then splice in new material at the bottom as we see done by others. No matter how good of job you do, the differing pieces of wood are going to expand and contract at different rates, causing the seam to show back up eventually, making it look like the patch job it is. But the worst consequence of the patch job is that?

…discerning the extent to which the remaining original wood jamb material has been exposed to the strains of fungus that leads to rot later is much less than an exact science. Portions of the jamb that seem solid and unaffected at the time of the patch invariably grow rotten in another year or two. There were also two other upgrades that we provided to these three double-entry door assemblies.

The first was to create an effective weatherstripping system. This included kerfing the jambs and installing a Silicone compression weatherstripping for the top & sides. We also adhered a weatherstripping product down the strike-sides to seal-up between each pair of doors and installed surface-mount door-hooks on the door bottoms to interlock with the interlocking thresholds.

We also replaced all the insulated glass in these doors, for they had all failed. Believe it or not, these custom steel doors were designed for double-pane, insulated glass. The doors faced south, so we upgraded the glass to 366 Low-E glass. It was a fun job. Having an adjoining patio right off the 2nd story master bedroom, upon which to set up our shop certainly helped us in the logistical department.