Brick veneer leaking at a door or window, and no weep holes in sight

A wet floor inside a walkout basement door, a stain under a window, or a rotted sill plate on a brick house built in the last seventy years is very often not a crack problem at all. It is a drainage problem inside the wall. If you walk around the house and cannot find small open joints along the bottom course of brick or above the doors and windows, there is a good chance the water that gets behind the brick has nowhere to go but in.

Veneer is built to leak, on purpose

Most Dayton houses built before the 1940s are solid masonry: two or more layers of brick bonded together, and water that soaks in dries back out the face. Most houses built after that, including most brick ranches and split-levels in Kettering, Beavercreek, Centerville and Huber Heights, are brick veneer: one layer of brick tied to a wood-framed wall with an air space between them.

Rain soaks through veneer. Mortar joints and brick are porous, and a wind-driven storm pushes water straight through the face. The system expects that. Water runs down the back of the brick, lands on flashing at the bottom of the wall and over each opening, and leaves through weep holes in the course just above. Leave out the flashing or the weeps, or bury the weeps under a patio or mulch, and the water pools on the steel lintel or the sill plate instead.

What the code asks for

The International Residential Code, which Ohio’s residential code is built on, is plain about it:

• Flashing (R703.8.5) goes beneath the first course of masonry above finished ground at the foundation or slab, and at other points of support, including structural floors, shelf angles and lintels.
• Weepholes (R703.8.6) go in the outside layer of brick at a maximum of 33 inches on center, at least 3/16 inch in diameter, located immediately above the flashing.

A house built before those rules were enforced is not illegal, but the physics did not change. Plenty of mid-century Dayton veneer went up with no flashing over the openings and no weeps anywhere.

Check this first

1. Walk the bottom course. Look for open head joints, plastic weep tubes, or rope wicks every two to three feet just above the foundation. Then look above each window and door, in the first course over the steel lintel.
2. Look at the steel over the leaking opening. Rust stains on the brick, a bowed edge, or a stair-step crack climbing from the corner mean water has been sitting on that lintel for years. Our step cracks page covers how to tell that from settlement.
3. Check what is touching the wall. A patio, stoop, deck ledger or raised bed that sits at or above the bottom course can cover the weeps that were there, and send water in at the same line.
4. Note when it leaks. Water inside only during wind-driven rain from one direction points at water through the face finding no way out. Water every time it rains, at the same spot, points at the opening’s flashing or the ledger above it.

What the repair actually is

Over a door or window, the fix is to take down the brick over the opening, inspect or replace the steel, set through-wall flashing with end dams so water cannot run off the ends into the wall, add a drip edge that carries it past the face, and relay the brick with open weeps in the course above. That is our lintel and sill work, $400 to $1,500 per opening. Where only two or three courses sit above the steel, there is less brick to take down and relay.

Along the base of a wall, we probe at a few points to find out whether flashing exists. If it does and the weeps are simply missing or buried, opening head joints and fitting insect-screened weep vents is a modest job. If there is no flashing at all, adding it means taking out the bottom courses in short sections, which is a bigger job and is quoted per elevation after we see it.

Above the brick, a chimney with a cracked or flat crown pours water down the face of the wall below it. If staining runs down from the chimney, the chimney crown belongs in the same visit; a crown sloped to shed water and overhanging the brick by a couple of inches stops feeding the wall.

What to send us

A photo of the leaking opening straight on, one of the bottom course of brick on that side of the house, and one of anything attached above it, like a deck ledger or light fixture. Tell us when it leaks and which way the rain was blowing. We will say from the photos whether it looks like flashing over the opening, flashing at the base, or both, and itemize the quote so you can see each part priced separately.