I am having an odd issue in my home. When it rains heavily, water leaks through a crack at the top of our front exterior door frame.



In addition to this leak, I am noticing water spots appearing on the drywall ceiling above this door.



I have the same waterspots appearing on the ceiling over a window about 3.5 feet to the left (facing the inside) of the door.



This picture shows the exterior of both the door and the window. Both are located underneath the overhang of my front porch. Unfortunately, I can not easily see the inside of this overhang. The view is blocked from the attic and if I remove the vinyl panels from underneath the overhang they are backed with plywood. I am ready to cut a hole in the plywood if I have to, but I am not sure where the water is coming from so I would like to have some guidance before cutting into it.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1w...ew?usp=sharing

My suspicion was that the roof was leaking between the siding and the shingles, but a brief inspection of the flashing doesn't seem to be indicative of that.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1...ms5ZG5LWkJGbFk

My next guess is that the windows maybe leaking between the siding and the sheathing but before tearing my house apart to find the leak I wanted to ask the question here. Has anyone seen anything like this? Thanks in advance for any advice given.

 

I'd start by making sure the gutters are clean.
Checking to see if the shingles overhang the room by up to 1".
There also should have been drip edging.
If the shingles are too short water can run behind the fachia and into the soffit then run back to the wall.
There also should have been starter strip used, not J molding at the bottom of that row of siding, and there's what looks like unsealed face nails in the flashing, done right there would be no need for face nails.
I'd pop off at least the bottom row of siding to make sure they ran the flashing far enough up the wall and used window tape around the nailing fin on the window.

 

Likewise, I would start at the second row of siding under the window and unzip it and lift it off the nailheads. That way you will be putting it back in the same place. Inspect what is behind the siding. There should be a WRB such as Tyvek, and the windows should be sealed with window tape over the nailing flanges and onto the OSB and Tyvek. Pictures of that would help, too.

 

Thank you all for your advice.

So, I popped up the bottom row of siding and saw that there is no WRB. Just some water damaged OSB. The OSB is damaged underneath each side of the second story windows. This is all pretty concerning to me. If these windows are leaking, then I am betting ALL windows on the house are leaking. We just don't know it yet because all the windows aren't over an overhang like these are.

Also very concerning is the lack of WRB. If there is no WRB here, would they have put it anywhere else?

I have never removed exterior vinyl window trim, but it seems like this is going to be a pretty large project to make this leaking stop in addition to checking around all of the other windows.

Does anyone have any other advice?

 

With pictures, possibly. We can't see what you see. http://www.doityourself.com/forum/el...your-post.html

 

Looks like your windows have built in J molding, there is no "trim" to be removed.
Post a picture so we can see what your seeing where that siding was removed.

 

It's a big issue if there really is no house wrap.
Vinyl siding is not waterproof.
There's always condensation forming behind it just from the changing humidity and temp. changes that would be controlled and prevent damage if there was house wrap.