Description

Every year home owners spend significant amounts of time and money on house construction. For this investment they expect, as a minimum, a building that keeps the water out long-term.

The work of MBIE's Weathertight Services Technical Team puts us in a good position to identify recurring areas of weathertightness failures.

Most of these failures are for buildings between 10 and 30 years old and therefore not built in accordance with the current Acceptable Solutions of the New Zealand Building Code.

Scope

This article identifies seven areas of the most common weathertightness failures:

1. Membrane roofs/gutters, scuppers and decks
2. Kick-out flashings at wall and roof junctions
3. Thresholds to decks
4. Parapets, balustrades and attachment points.
5. Joints and flashings in cladding
6. Joinery installation
7. Ground clearances