Flashing the Window Head & Sill

couple of things that you want to keep in mind as you do this one that this is just one way of taking care of flashing the head in the cell and the base obviously the way I think is best will get the excess house wrap or paper out of the window okay once you have your rough opening in place it's okay for this house wrap to go ahead and turn into the opening on the sides gives you a little added protection in fact same thing here both sides and at the base so we'll go ahead and do that before we set the window as you see just from this simple demonstration it would be very hard for water to get into the house with these simple steps one question should you fold this in as we've done on the sides no what would happen if you've got some sort of a hole here and any water that got through the veneer above this came down now you've directed it into the home it has no choice but to go in obviously what we do not want so we always cut this top piece off flush we're going to have a piece of flashing here at the head anyway in just a few moments but don't turn that top piece of house wrap tar paper whatever it is you're using for a house wrap into the window head I don't know if you'll take this extra step if you would it would certainly add to your ability perhaps to keep water out of the home what you could do obviously after the windows in place is come back and set this flashing against the house and pull it through the brick veneer but would be much better if before the window was set I guess which would call for the carpenters to set this piece if it could go into the base of the window into the rough opening just a bit and actually turn up on both sides forming a dam hopefully you can see that I've allowed this piece of flashing to be an inch or so long on both sides so that it turns up on both sides of the opening later it can also turn up in the back when the sheetrock is placed forming a dam that any water that gets in must then come back toward the exterior of the home okay as the Mason comes on site now if this piece could already be in place imagine how easy it would be for him to take this and pull it out underneath the sill and then lay the window sill so when he water then that got through this window sill these headers in the sill would exit back to the outside of the wall but not only that the corners of this window are caulked and as you know any material expands and contracts daily so with thermal expansion taking place on this unit it moves and bends and creeps and from time to time we have to come back and recaulk windows so if it's going to leak why not put the flashing as I showed you underneath the window as well and catch any water that might get through the unit itself so now we have the sill flashing in place we have our base flashing all we really like now is here at the window head to satisfy the code as far as windows are concerned so one more piece again there are several types of flashings that you could use for this application not wanting to lay brick up this wall imagine now that the brick are laid up to this point on both sides what the Mason would do then is lay an angle iron or a lentil across his opening and it should extend at least four inches past the window or rough opening on each side to allow for support on the masonry on both sides of the window carry the load of the brickwork above the window that being the case the flashing should be a little long as well any any water that this flashing catches will need to be directed back to the outside but remember I said earlier that everything should shingle if I just came here now and put this flashing and stapled it on top of the house wrap can you see that water could run right behind it not a very good application so a simple way very simple way to make sure that it sheds water properly is just to kind of give yourself a measurement as to the length of the flashing make a cut horizontally in your house wrap okay let's go ahead now and install this final piece of flashing here at the window head we've made this incision at the top in the house wrap which in this case is paper and it's very simple now to make sure that in satisfying the code we just take this piece of through wall flashing and slide it up into the cut that we've made in the paper and attach it to the wall what this does for us is gives us that shingling action that we were talking about at the base of the wall having been in the masonry industry for 40 plus years now I always hear Mason say when I talk to them about this procedure that a single wife of brickwork properly installed keeps the water out that's just not the case this is a very important piece of flashing at the window head this seems to be where it leaks most of the time so what we've done now effectively if any water were to get through the brick veneer above this window and if it were enabling somehow we're able to get to the back of this paper and and run down there's no way it can get into the house with this shingling action that we've done so all that's left for the mason to do now is to pull this piece out on top of the angle iron of the lentil above the window place a couple of wheat poles some type of device at that point as he did it to windowsill and at the base of the wall it's very important to get the water out as quickly as possible because any water that lays behind the wall could contribute to mold growth in some way as well as brick staining different types of stains so the quicker it exits the wall the better

Channel: Brick Industry Association

Views: 105,171

Keywords: Brick (Structure Facade Material)

Id: ITfVImuD0Os

Length: 7min 17sec (437 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 11 2013