Oxley Woods Living

Life in an Oxley Woods eco house

 
 

Posts Tagged ‘window’

 

We have more water in yet another location

November 1, 2008

When term “leako home” came to mind after first discovering that our house wasn’t rain proof back in July, I would never have imagined that come November we’d still be waiting for repairs to be completed on some of those initial leaks and the damage they caused, let alone be discovering ever more locations where water is coming into our home, but sadly, it seems we just have.

In our Son’s bedroom he is fortunate to have a fantastic corner window that currently offers great views out into the distance over Oxley Park and Milton Keynes.  Unfortunately, it appears this window is faulty, and lets in rain water.  Not good, not good at all.

We had another paranoid, nervous scout around the house following some quite heavy rain and witnessing our leak above the kitchen window first hand tonight, and, as has all too often proved to be the case, this lead to us discovering yet more water coming into the home from outside. 

This appears to be different from other leaks, most of the other leaks have appeared on the walls and ceilings first, while some have been diagnosed as problems with the windows themselves, and others have had to have several attempts and a complete strip down and resealing of one entire side of the house (so far), this one seems to be coming through the window itself, and running down the seam between the two pieces of glass.

We wiped the water away after first discovering this and taking the following photos, but very soon the area was just as wet again. We were hopeful it was condensation, but the speed with which the wetness returned seems to rule this out.  We cant see or feel any particular dampness on the wall above the window, which is usually the case, and these windows do not touch the ceiling, as the top floor has taller, sloped ceilings.  It really does seem this is coming through the window itself, which is nothing if not an unwelcome change from the usual modes of entry.

I’m writing this not long after finding this latest leak, and I have to say that not for the first time I feel absolutely terrible, fed up, distressed and quite drained by this whole affair.  Horrible wet evening, again.  I’m so tired of this every time we get bad weather, even if we don’t find a new leak, or one coming back, the stress it causes to just see rain outside is exhausting.

Further, serious leaking in the kitchen

November 1, 2008

We already posted about the rain water making its way into the kitchen above the window.  While we had seen the marks to show this, we hadn’t actually witnessed this water “in action”, not until today.

We’ve had a hell of a lot of disruption lately, including five consecutive days of work on one side of the house to attempt to remedy the apparently more serious problems of water ingress on that side of the home, which included a Saturday, and caused a lot of grief for our baby girl (and consequently, us!).

Anyway, more on that later, but this is about as much of a “live update” as I’ve managed to post on this blog so far.  Today it’s been raining since mid morning, and this evening it has been raining pretty hard, and not in the most common direction across the house, so I decided to check the kitchen window.

Yes water is coming in via the ceiling above the kitchen window, there is a large wet patch on the ceiling, and the water is literally dripping from the window frame.  This water was dripping down, on the glass, the kitchen surface, and irritatingly onto some Halloween sweets we’d bought for our Son and placed in the window the night before.

Not happy, but we knew this leak was here already, but now we’ve seen it for ourselves, we appreciate how serious it is.  Apparently someone from the George Wimpey management team is due to visit us on Wednesday (it’s currently Saturday night) to check the previous repairs and decide if that’s the correct way forward (or something along these lines, I have no idea what they’re really up to half the time), they may have to put that, and the repairs forward, at this rate.

The problem with windows…

October 22, 2008

The problem with windows and our Oxley Woods eco home, is that they don’t appear to be water tight by design.  Which, as I’m sure you can appreciate, isn’t ideal.

After only owning the property for a couple of weeks, we had some rather nasty looking water marks on various walls, mostly concentrated above and around windows, although not exclusively so.

We have been informed that the design has been modified/changed as a result of this discovery, and all previously built houses are being treated retrospectively, so that’s a positive thing.  Our main issue, believe it or not, wasn’t really with the water leak, but the fact that even now our windows still, to us (and the managers on site agree) look repaired, and certainly nowhere near as good as new.

This all goes back to early July, but the sequence of events has gone something like this…

Clear mastic applied to the sills.  Clearly not right, so dug out (some chipping/scratching occurred when this was carried out), and black mastic applied in it’s place.  This was not applied neatly, or painted over well, looked pretty terrible so eventually a painter/decorator was called in to do it.  Eventually builder’s caulk was used instead of any type of mastic, and the job was better (not great), BUT, as this was applied in hot weather (and also over previous repairs), we had terrible problems with bubbling and peeling….

Last week the painter came back, we believed to removed the old, scruffy, cracked caulking, take back down the paintwork to smooth it, and paint it over again.  Unfortunately, only a few hours on the job later, and the work is not up to scratch at all, and the caulking and previous repairs have largely just been “gone over” again.

 So, frustratingly, we’re awaiting the return of the decorator(s) to spend a decent amount of time taking back all the layers of below par repairs, to start afresh.  Our frustration is compounded when we see the neighbouring house has had the caulking done and the job is very neat and tidy, blows ours away, and that we had a chipped rear door frame painted to a very high standard.  So we know it CAN be done, it’s just not being done for us.

Hopefully we’re going to get there, and the next time it will be taken seriously, and the job will be done properly.  It’s a shame it took several bodges before we actually had a painted in to do the painting, and even then it’s been in poor conditions, and to a substandard level.  Fingers crossed for the next time (and for decent enough weather to allow the repairs!).

These pictures illustrate some of the states of repair the windows have been in, up until October 17th.  We’ve taken loads more as you can imagine, but wont bore you with them all here!

New water stains in the kitchen!

October 22, 2008

Today, while the guys from Wood Newton have been very busy stripping and reworking our house from the outside (more on that soon!), we have annoyingly found some more tide marks and water stains, this time above the kitchen window.

Although not very clear in the photographs, they almost go the full window width.  Extremely frustrating, but Wood Newton and Taylor Wimpey believe they have again found the solution to the leaking, hopefully one that will work for good, and this work will now be carried out to side, front and back elevations to make sure the house is properly water tight from every approach!

Leaky window frame in upper bedroom

October 21, 2008

We’ve had a lot of trouble with water at our new eco home at Oxley Woods, more on that later no doubt, but a more recent problem was a leak through our Son’s bedroom window.  We had noticed a water mark/stain down his wall coming from a corner of the opening window section one morning, so reported this to the site manager’s office.  Shortly after it rained again, and we managed to see the water actually dripping down from the window.

This has been remedied by applying caulk to the window seal, where the water was getting in.  This has since been painted over (partially) to blend in better with the window, but the repair is still unsightly.  Still, since the repair, it seems that this leak has been cured.  Touch wood!