Problem Painters

Tip: click on any image below to view it full-size.

The owner of this 3-flat hired painters to paint his windows. As is all too common, the painters took a shortcut by not caulking the window casing to the brick on any of the windows on this building. Note the large gap between the brick and the wood at the top left corner of the window. These gaps continue around the entire perimeter of the window casing. Whenever wind blows, cold air will travel directly through gaps like this and into the room. This not only creates uncomfortable drafts, but multiplied by all the windows in the building, it causes a huge amount of wasted energy. It also allows water to get behind the casing, causing rot.

In the rare cases that painters do caulk around window openings, they often use inexpensive calk that fails in a few years. For our work, we use only premium LEED-certified environmentally friendly sealants.