There are two windows in my trailer that are the same size, about 14" tall by 30" wide. Both show signs of leaking. As near as I can tell, the window I removed today is not leaking into the wall. The wall shows no signs of delamination from water intrusion. The only sign of water leakage is on the interior wall. There are stains coming down from the window, by both lower corners. I couldn't find any holes or cracks in the window frame that would have allowed water to leak through.

I caught the leak once, about two weeks ago. The trailer was parked out front of my house and it rained fairly hard. The nose of the trailer was pointed downhill, at about 4°. I could see water in the window frame and it was sitting in the corner. The four weep holes are clear. Is it possible water accumulated in the frame and simply overflowed the frame? Wouldn't the weep holes have allowed that much water to drain?

The gasket was in good shape. There are no tears. The gasket was very securely fastened to the window frame. On top of the frame, the gasket is a bit more flat than on the bottom. In the picture below, this is the only abnormal portion of the gasket. The top of the window is on the right side of the picture.


This picture is the side of the window. It's the only abnormal section of the window opening. What you're looking at is the fiberglass exterior on the left, interior panel on the right. The aluminum stud is showing through the rigid foam insulation.


Bottom of the window opening. No issues there.


There are two screws that never made it into the outer window frame. This is one of them. The screw was supposed to go into the slot where the green arrow is. Instead, the screw went to the right, where the red arrow is. One of the screws that missed was in the lower left hand corner of the window. I question how tight that corner was secured.


Since I had the window out, I replaced the gasket with butyl tape. I wasn't sure what size tape to use. The frame is 1" wide, but there is a small lip at the edge. I used 3/4" butyl tape because I didn't have 1" tape and the 3/4" tape fit well around most of the frame. The was a small amount of squeeze out of butyl tape after all the screws were tightened.

 

Are the “weepers” blocked? Did you run a caulking bead across the top and down the sides of the window frame, after you tightened it in place (not along the bottom) and trimmed any excess tacky tape? Not just do to condensation is it?

Steve

 

Weepers are clear, bead of caulk across the top and down the sides (not the bottom) and excess butyl was trimmed off before caulk.

I'm not sure what the ideal chemical would be for removing the foam gasket residue. It was stubborn. I started with mineral spirits, then acetone and finally settled on Xylene which worked but also took off the finish. Fortunately, it was just the finish on the inside of the window frame, so nobody (but me) will see it.

It seems to be more than just condensation to me. But even if it was condensation, it should go out the weep holes, right? There are stains on the wall all the way down to the floor. That's 7' of stains. I should mention that one of the gaskets around the glass wasn't quite seated in place. It needed to be pushed back in about 1/4". Maybe that's it?