I am really nervous now. I have built a new huge balcony in my backyard. The contractor built floor with treated plywood. Tiles contractor installed hardy on top of the plywood and then porcelain tiles.
Before installing hardy I have coated with rubber paint on plywood and sealed all joints and corners.
I have wood railing with wood poles. When rains come I have seen leaks under balcony (patio). Mainly I have observed where railing poles and tiles connected and brick wall and tiles connected. ( I am attaching pictures).
My questions. How can I seal these areas very strongly? Is there any strong bond I can use seal these joint areas?
Sorry for the trouble you're having. Unfortunately, there's not going to be a good way to completely fix your problem without demolition.
First, it looks like the deck isn't sloped properly to shed water. Not really a problem with decking, the water just falls through. But with tile, you need to keep water from settling under the tile, and you can't do that if the substrate is flat.
Second, your builder shouldn't have used treated plywood, since it warps as it dries out.
Third, it doesn't appear that the tile and substrate are flashed to the house, so water gets down under the tile. If you live in an area that has freeze/thaw cycles, that can really cause a problem.
Quote:
Before installing hardy I have coated with rubber paint on plywood and sealed all joints and corners.
What was the rubber material you used? There's probably hundreds of holes in the rubber material now from all the nails you used.
Simple question: Is there a slope from the house out to the edge? It should be a MINIMUM of 1/4" per linear foot. If it doesn't have this, a rebuild is required.
__________________
Laz...
“I came, I saw, she conquered."
The original Latin seems to have been garbled.”
There is good enough slope for balcony. They cut more than and inch for joists.water not staying at all. Only some places have leak issues and looking for good Sealant for strong bond.
It will be helpful if you'll add a geographic location to your User Profile.
You say you have "enough slope," and that "they cut more than an inch for joists." Not sure exactly what you mean there, but if you're indicating that you have only one inch of vertical drop from the house to the outside edge of your deck you certainly do not have "enough" slope. The slope of 1/4" per horizontal foot that Laz cited above in the minimum requirement for an installation such as yours. Your one inch would be sufficient slope for a run of only four feet and your deck appears to extend at least three times that far.
Flashing at the building and at each of your railing posts would also be mandatory. I can't tell in your photos what you may or may not have at the building, but I see no evidence of any such flashing as would be required. And it's apparent that there is no flashing around the railing posts.
The lack of waterproofing on top of your CBU is also a very serious problem. In fact, given the finished ceiling below, I would consider your deck to be over occupied living space and require very significant improvement to what you describe.
You can, of course, try to apply some sealant around your posts and at the house, but that's not going to solve your problem for the longer term. As Kevin pointed out above, "there's not going to be a good way to completely fix your problem without demolition."
I think it's almost criminal to have such a large, beautiful deck built so incorrectly, but I doubt you have any significant recourse available to you. Possible, but not likely.
Do you have any photos showing how the new deck was attached to the building?
Looks like you have possibly four sheets of plywood from the house to the edge of the deck. If that's the case, you have 16' of run, so the deck should fall 4" from the house to the edge. Do you have that?
Also, like I mentioned before, you thoroughly punctured whatever waterproofing you had with all the nails or screws you used to install the backer board. Once the waterproofing is breached, there's no going back, except to the very beginning.
From what we can see in your pictures and what you've told us, you just have too many issues to do any kind of repair. Sorry.
One other thing I noticed from your pictures, you have some electrical fixtures in the space below that deck, looks like can lights.
I would be very concerned about water getting into those fixtures and causing an electrical issue, or worse.
And that downspout dumping onto the deck is going to deposit a lot of water right at that corner of the house. That's not really a good place for it to terminate, in my opinion.
Shrikanth, I still don't see your geographic location in your User Profile.
There's really no effective way to install the necessary flashing after the fact. What you need is to flash the waterproofing membrane, which you do not have, up the walls and post penetrations before the tile is installed.
We're not trying to be unreasonable or less than helpful here, that's not the goal of the forum. What we are being is realistic. That deck is not going to last as long as it should and you're not gonna be able to save it by applying sealants to the surface.
I can't see enough detail in the photo of the ledger board installed against the building as support for your joists, but that is one of the most critical structural connections in any residential structure. Given the lack of attention to the waterproofing for the ceramic tile installation, I'd be concerned with how that was done.
I can't see enough detail in the photo of the ledger board installed against the building as support for your joists, but that is one of the most critical structural connections in any residential structure.
I zoomed in on that picture and I couldn't see any kind of anchors at all there. Maybe there's something I just can't see.
I would expect to see a nut and washer at least every couple of feet to indicate there is some kind of anchor in the brick.
And no joist hangers for the two joists that are up. Maybe they installed some afterwards?
Edit: I zoomed in on another picture and it appears there are joists hangers there, so that's a good thing.
Ok, in your first picture it looked like there was standing water, but if you have a continuous slope away from the house like you described, that's fine.
In your one picture that appears to show water running down the joist, where is that located on the deck?
If you have multiple locations that water is coming through, there's definitely something wrong with the waterproofing. Either it was applied incorrectly, or it's been breached.
But like CX said, waterproofing around the posts and against the house should have been done before the tile was set. Without taking up those tile, there's no way to attach it to the waterproofing underneath.
One other thing we didn't address was the edge of the deck, that being the low side and the sides of the deck. If there's not some sort of drip edge, water can work its way under the edges over time.
