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Water intrusion

erikdavitt | Posted in General Questions on

I am curious if anyone has ideas or have had techniques that have worked in the past to help fix certain problem areas with water intrusion. I recently bought a nightmare of a house about a year ago. I had not idea the issues it would have.

The house has a walk out basement which I was told was made to be finished. I knocked a bunch of money off buying the house as when I viewed it only the first floor was finished. For $50,000 more the builder said he would finish the basement which I turned down. I am glad I did.

The front of the house is where you can walk out of the basement. Above that on the first floor is a wrap around porch. Initially I had bulk water entry coming into the basement as rainwater along with melting snow was getting behind the flashing of the porch (which consisted only of sheet metal) behind the ledger soaking the sheathing on the inside of the basement. Since I have reflashed most of the porch and this has resolved.

I have recently been noticing that in  heavy rain the first 6-7 inches of the sheathing gets wet. It commonly occurs in a corner where there is a lot of water coming off of the roof. I suspect it is all capillary action. The sheathing/sill sits about 4-5 inches above the ground on concrete. (see pics.) anyone have good ideas how to remediate this problem?

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Replies

  1. GBA Editor
    Brian Pontolilo | | #1

    Hi Eric.

    The first two things to look at are typically gutters and grading. It looks like that gutter downspout terminates just about at the level of your sill plate. Am I seeing that correctly? Have you observed how your gutters are working in a rainstorm?

  2. tommay | | #2

    You're collecting water from the roof and the deck and dumping in front of your entry. Lot of water. As brian said , check your gutters and grade. If the situation consists, try putting something under the deck to catch and redirect water flow. Corrugated panels, alum. or plastic, work well for this.

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