You’re walking around the outside of your home when you spot some peeling paint around the windows. After further investigation, you realize the wood is spongey. This issue indicates a common but serious problem.
How Water Leaks into Your Home
We paint wood to protect it from the elements. When paint peels, it’s a sign of possible wood rot. The window sill is the most susceptible to wood decay. Water can leak into the cracks of a rotten sill allowing water to travel into the wall.
The exterior wood has the wind and sun to help remove the moisture, but when water gets into the wall, there isn’t anything to help evaporate the built-up moisture. Instead, the water sits. This situation provides the perfect dark and moist environment to encourage mold growth and wood deterioration.
If left untreated long enough, studs begin to rot. Studs are the vertical beams that support the frame of your home. When rot compromises the structural integrity of the studs, you are looking at a very serious safety hazard along with expensive home repairs.
How to Treat Wood Rot
The idea that any portion of your home’s exterior contains rotten wood is alarming. All areas of lumber exposed to mold or wood rot need to be completely removed. This is a time-consuming, labor-intensive, expensive project that involves inspecting your home’s exterior wood windows and siding for rotten or moldy areas, removing and replacing the decayed wood, then priming and painting the new exterior wood windows or wood siding.
This is certainly not a home improvement project that you will want to repeat! Instead, you should take a proactive approach that prevents any reoccurrence of rotting wood windows and siding. To stop this issue from happening again, we have some solutions.
Windows: Replace wood windows with low-maintenance vinyl windows. Vinyl material does not rot.
Window Trim: The exterior wood trim around the perimeter of your windows should be wrapped with metal coil. This metal “cladding” tightly seals the wood trim from the harsh elements ensuring moisture is kept away from the wood trim you just replaced.
Siding: Consider replacing your wood siding with vinyl siding. The waterproof vinyl siding virtually wraps the exterior of your home to prevent moisture from getting in. ODW also applies insulation before installing the vinyl siding to increase the home’s energy efficiency. With today’s rising prices for electricity and gas to heat & cool homes, vinyl siding is just a smart, cost-saving remodel strategy. Plus, you’ll never have to deal with replacing rotten or moldy exterior wood ever again. Problem solved!
If the inspection of your home’s exterior reveals rotting wood windows or siding, ODW can help. Call us today for a free estimate of new vinyl siding and/or new vinyl windows.