Miscellaneous Repair

The 5 story Hamilton Arms Condominiums on S.W. 16th Ave., built in 1928, was converted in 2005 to condominiums, at which time it might be assumed the windows were changed to Vinyl Sliding windows.

Installing windows into a masonry building such as this eschews tying them into a moisture-barrier, so you need to know what you’re doing in sealing them against the elements.

Finding potential points of entry for how the water was ending up at the top of the window in the condo below, was not of course, a very difficult task, as you can see by this photo.

Phil McNair digs out some of the old caulking that was beginning to peel away…

…to reveal what was behind the caulking. Mostly, just a void leading into the wall below.

The truly proper way to fix this water leak would have been to remove the window & re-install it. But that would have necessitated a man-lift, thus considerably more money, and no doubt all the windows should be redone. At least on this end of the building.

But the property management company that hired us, like most all property management companies, have financial constraints that tend to dictate “patching things up” rather than embarking on an expensive redo.

So measures were taken that should protect this one opening for the foreseeable near future.

Not only does the aluminum drip-cap cover the seam that ran the entire width of the window, as can be seen in the 2nd photo (above), but it should also help deflect moisture from accessing through the top of anymore caulking that begins to peel away at the bottom. Unconventional, but functional.

You may note that care was taken to avoid plugging (covering) the weep-hole system designed into the sills of these Vinyl Windows.