LESLIE: Now we’re going to talk about a leaky window with Shirley in Nebraska. Shirley, what happened?
SHIRLEY: We have a rental house and it … and there’s water leaking in from … it looks as if it’s leaking in from underneath the bottom trim of the window.
TOM: Okay.
SHIRLEY: And well we thought, well, we’d shut the window real tight and we closed it and it’s still leaking in from under the windows.
TOM: How old are your windows, Shirley? Are they modern or are they old windows?
SHIRLEY: It’s an older home; I’m going to say, probably, built in the 1900’s. It’s just an old home.
TOM: So you have old windows, then.
SHIRLEY: Probably.
TOM: Okay. Are they wood windows?
SHIRLEY: Yes.
TOM: Do you have storm windows on there?
SHIRLEY: Yes.
TOM: Okay. Are the storm windows installed properly? Are they in the right order? Because, sometimes, if you happen to reverse the panes in the storm windows by accident, then they basically act as a trough and let all the water run into your house.
SHIRLEY: I didn’t know that. (laughing) Wrong way of putting those windows in?
TOM: Think about the way the rain’s going to fall …
SHIRLEY: Okay.
TOM: … and make sure it rolls down properly and away. The other thing that you can do is in the storm … in the sill of the window, you need to, typically, drill like quarter-inch size holes through the bottom of the storm window ledge – the little metal storm window ledge – so that if water gets inside that sill, it runs back out again. And a lot of times those weep – those are called weep holes – a lot of times they get clogged. So take a look in those sills and see if there are drain holes in there.
SHIRLEY: I’ll be darned; I didn’t know that.
TOM: Yeah.
SHIRLEY: Well, I sure will.
TOM: Alright, well take care. Take a look at those two things and I think one of those is going to nail this down. Alright, Shirley?
SHIRLEY: Oh, that’s great. Thank you very much.
TOM: You’re welcome. Thanks for calling The Money Pit.
LESLIE: Tom, you are a wealth of knowledge.
TOM: We try. We try. It’s only because I have an old house. (laughing) Learn from my mistakes. (laughing) Do as I say not as I do, right?
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