Ahh, leaks. There is nothing like them. They are so fun to try to fix, right? Yeah right.
I remember when I was a kid, we had a few leaks in the downstairs area of our house. Actually, it was the main floor. Somewhere up in the unfinished attic water was getting through. We looked for years and never found it. It was one of those things. We looked for anything wet on the ceiling, floor and everything in between. Nothing. We just had leaks every time it rained really hard.
Oh yeah, and skylights. Forget it. Don’t even get me going on skylights.
Okay, here’s the deal. We have a leak in our basement sliding glass door. The leak is getting in from outside somewhere and dripping from the space in between the vinyl door and the wood molding. I’ll show you with a photo below. The leak only occurs when it is raining really hard and when it’s windy outside. Basically when the water is able to run down the side of the house.
The sliding glass door was installed by a professional installer almost two years ago. I do remember him saying something like, “You should run a bead of caulk along there.” I do remember that. Where? I don’t remember, but I remember him saying it.
Just to give you a better picture, we also have a double window directly above the sliding glass door and a smaller bathroom window above that. Ooh, fun.
A few days ago, I went outside with a caulking gun and ran a few beads of silicone caulk in between the j-channel above the sliding glass door and some sort of flashing. I also ran another bead somewhere else. I’ll show you in the photos below.
Last night was a rainy one. I was fairly excited to see if my caulking job would hold up. Sadly to say, it didn’t. Well, I’m not sure if it didn’t hold up, I just think that I caulked the area that wasn’t posing a problem. I now need to find where the leak is actually originating.
Let me show you the pictures.
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Basement sliding glass door with window above
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Upper right corner of sliding glass door where j-channel meets flashing
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Areas of sliding glass door I caulked
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Above sliding glass door where j-channel meets vinyl siding
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Side view of above sliding glass door – #1
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Side view of above sliding glass door – #2
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Running water into j-channel above sliding glass door
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Spraying water above sliding glass door to find leak
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Area inside sliding glass door where leak is coming through
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Spraying water at window above sliding glass door to find leak
As you can see, I went outside today with hose in hand. I sprayed the area above the sliding glass door in an effort to find where the leak is coming from, the door area or the window area. After I sprayed the door area, I poked my head inside to see if there was any water coming through. Nothing.
Then, I sprayed the window area above the sliding glass door. I checked inside. Nothing.
I was stumped.
I stood there for a few minutes and then started seeing water come through inside. The only problem is that now I don’t know if it’s coming from the window or the door area. I may have to try this experiment again.
The whole reason I am writing this post to basically to offer some photos of my issue. I found a few websites last night that described the identical problem, but didn’t have any photos. I hope this post can help someone who needs to see what is going on.
I’ll update this blog when I solve my little problem.
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