Day 1 starts out arriving at the job and setting up. The owner has to go to work; call me if there are any problems he says…

I open the drain area to find damage extends under the stucco covered parapet wall, which necessitates a change order to open the wall and inspect for further damage. After I opened the wall, the job suddenly took a turn for the worse. The interior wall cavities had significant fungal growth and rotted sheathing.

Making a long story shorter, the owner hired a contractor to start doing demo to find where the water damage stopped. After about 2 weeks of demo, the answer became clear. From the roof to the ground, all the way around the house, every bit of stucco cladding came off to reveal horrendous hidden damage. I was on-site numerous times to see for myself and document the damage. I found peel n stick bituthane membrane that had been stretched over the parapet wall and nails put through it to secure a backer board that was tiled over. Water went right through the nail holes in the backer board and through the bituthane that didn’t “self-heal” itself. Where does water go once it’s in the house framing? To the rest of the house framing, because water hates dry wood and wet wood in a sealed environment becomes a Petri dish of fungus and mold which just spreads through the wood. OSB shear walls certainly didn’t help as fungus loves wood chips and glue. Other problems included windows installed incorrectly, WRB placed over weathered WRB, improper lapping…and so it went.

How much damage? Over $125,000.00. Yes you read that right. That was in 2013; I’d hate to think what it would cost today, 9 years later.

So the lesson to take away here is two fold; one, always get a specialized deck inspection done on any roof deck or balcony and if there are problems found, do not take a credit, insist the owner fixes the problems and everything found damaged underneath, and two, quality assurance observations while the building was being constructed may have helped Avery these problems in the first place.

We at William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC are here to help in your specialized deck inspection needs and to perform quality assurance observations while the home is under construction.

Learn more about our quality assurance services here at this page and deck inspection services here at this page.