Hi,
In November my wife and I bought a new (to us - it was built in '78) house. One of the bedrooms had cracked drywall under the window - the seller disclosed that it was 15 year old water damage from a replacement window that was installed but leaked a few days later. He said the installers immediately came out and fixed it and he "hadn't had problems since." Our home inspector took his word for it, apparently. It had been very dry when our inspections took place so we had no reason to not believe the seller (no visible water or leaking). Come February, I decided to replace the drywall in preparation for painting, and when I opened up the wall, the cripple studs were rotten, rough window sill was rotten (no flashing or sill pan of any kind), sole plate was rotten, subfloor was rotten to about 2 feet out from the wall, insulation was moldy, everything in there was wet, and the sheathing had basically disintegrated. There is a brick veneer on that side of the house so fortunately we weren't looking at the back of the siding. I cleaned and re-caulked the window, sprayed it with a hose, and didn't see a leak, so assumed the leak was fixed. I killed the mold, ripped everything out, and over the last 3 months, replaced and rebuilt everything in the evenings after work (I did have to replace the section of sheathing from the inside - not the best way to go about it, but we couldn't afford ripping out the brick veneer and rebuilding). There was no house wrap or tar paper on the sheathing.

Fast forward to May. I painted 2 weeks ago and have pretty much left the room alone since then, waiting for carpet guys to come. During that 2 weeks we've had torrential rains, and apparently the window leaked. Carpet guys showed up yesterday and told me they wouldn't install since the subfloor is wet. We rescheduled.

I inspected the caulking, which looked good. Siding abutting the window looks fine. I took a cup and poured water into the sill, and lo and behold it appears that the water is coming through the weep holes by the center mullion. The weep holes on the outside of the window are not blocked. I have no idea why this didn't leak in my test in February.

Since I'm not the original purchaser, and it's been 15 years, the installer refuses to help. My question is, is this window repairable? Can I remove it, properly flash things, and re-install, or should I just replace it? A year ago I put new construction windows in my old house with lap siding, tearing out and replacing the 40 year old aluminum frame windows, so I know the process in general. This seems like a different animal though, with the brick veneer.

How should I go about this?