July 14 House Remediation Update

The last couple of days, the contractor removed stucco from the master bedroom (upper level) and family room (lower level) walls. Fortunately, there have been no surprises as regards wet/damaged sheathing...and the (potential) resulting damaged framing. Here is a view of the family room exit door. It was to the right of the door below the electrical socket that we found ants when the engineers cut through the stucco during the all-party inspection last year.

Here are a couple of pictures of the moisture-damaged sheathing. A few of the reasons for the wetness are:

- windows and doors were "dry installed" meaning there was no flashing in the rough openings of the windows and doors (and no drip caps above);

- the grade D paper, put over the sheathing/under the stucco, was "reverse lapped" over the "ice and water" tape sealant (meaning water would run under the paper into the sheathing rather than on the outside of the paper where it could evaporate through the stucco or run down to the ground behind the stucco);

- the stucco itself, rather than being 3/4" thick is more like 3/8" to 1/2" around the house.

This wet sheathing is below the rim joist at the upper left of the family room patio door.


Yesterday they pulled the window in the bedroom below and left of the great room in order to check whether or not there was damage to the window. We were suspecting there might be damage because

there had been water dripping from behind the window casing down the shade and onto the window sill. We were pleased to find out there was none. The rough opening for this window is shown to the left.

Friday morning we are going to pull the great room window. I can only hope we are as lucky with this one, but do not hold out much hope. I would much rather have had to replace the smaller bedroom window rather than the very costly great room window.

Shown below are the contractors cutting the stucco with diamond-tipped saws. They cut just deeply enough to get through the stucco and wire holding it, but not so deep they score the sheathing. They then use pry bars to break off a section of the stucco/wire and toss it to the ground. After removing the stucco from a section of the house, they haul the pile to a dumpster staged in our driveway.

What you see nailed into the roof near the center of the house and at the left corner is called a pump jack. There are 10 of these positioned around the sides and back of the house. Each of these jacks have an arm jutting out upon which they place an aluminum ladder (as well as a 2 x 12 between the right jack and the step ladder at the right - candidate for a Darwin Award maybe??) They stand on the ladder while they cut away the stucco. As they need to move down (or up) the wall, they release a locking mechanism at each jack and step on a plunger-type lever. This will move the ladder up or down the uprights.

Since they do not have any more jacks, and do not want to have to move the ones already in place twice, it might be we will re-set windows and doors and put the trim and siding on the sides and back of the house before removing taking stucco and brick from the front.

To be continued....