Defect / Water Leak Remediation

Anyone who knows what the weather can be like on the S.W. facing hillside in the Forest Heights area knows that the word “extreme” almost doesn’t cover it.

So if the exterior envelope of a house isn’t buttoned up tighter than a Texas tick on a hound dog, you’re likely going to find out about it, as these folks did when their ceiling developed a leak.

It doesn’t take a forensic exterior envelope engineer to suspect the corresponding vertical wall almost directly above the water-stains in the ceiling. Isn’t that a great term… Forensic…

The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as; …Relating to the use of science or technology in the investigation & establishment of facts or evidence in a court of law. I’m inserting it in these writings every chance I get because it’s one of the hot buzzwords right now related…

…to construction defect work. I’m hoping Google Analytics will route folks to our web-site who use it as a key term. But no, I’m not a forensic engineer, or a CSI (Construction Scene Investigator), although I’m certain you were thinking I was.

As you can see in the prior photo, there’s some black felt-paper (moisture-barrier) sticking out beneath the bottom course of siding there. We pulled off a couple courses of siding, and you can see (above) the previous forensic engineer which our client had called inserted it “over” the bottom of the original moisture-barrier,…

…apparently thinking inadequate overlap to the metal roof-flashing (below it) might be the problem. Of course, a proper installation would have involved the felt moisture-barrier being overlapped by the original moisture-barrier. No matter, it wouldn’t have solved the problem anyway…as you can see by the water-stains on…

…the plywood sheathing, the water is making its way down behind all the moisture-barrier.
The real culprit… Not running the moisture barrier all the way to the top of the exterior wall and sealing it to the eve structure. Who would have thought rain would make it all the way up under those eves…

Well the truth is that I would not have thought it would, were it not for the many years…and now decades that I’ve spent tracing down these leaks…and specifically tracing down leaks on the hillside in Forest Heights where the storms rolling in from the coast hit the hill and the air-masses are forced UP, taking the rain with them.

As you can see, we opened up the ceiling to check for water damage to the structural components. And yes, our own crew possesses the expertise to button the rock back up and to even apply and match the original textures and brocades that exist so that all evidence of the trauma disappears.