Nickster14

Thanks for the fix advice, I had considered running the roof into the house and back up the upstand but I haven’t been able to discuss with the builder. We’ve [usefully] deviated from my original question so, given that the warranty company signed off something that didn’t meet the requirement of their own technical manual can I make a financial claim to correct it even if the lack of upstand isn’t directly attributable to my issue?

No, it’s not the decking. There is a 50mm gap between the decking and the patio door. The upstand under the door is max 30mm. I think our issue is a combination of the door not being sealed into the structure and the water not draining away fast enough and inundating the joints at the top of the upstand. The strips to the side of window are temporary and I have removed some of the decking in preparation for work being done at some point in the future.

The rafters run away from the house. The decking was/is composite board which I tried to use as a roof as such - it worked perfectly but we still got water on the roof itself. The window faces East and we had a lot of driving rain into it over the winter and I suspect this highlighted the flaws in the seals.

The builder has suggested getting a smaller triangular window or cutting the existing one down to allow the whole assembly to move up. I’m concerned that if we go that way the corners of the patio door will be stopped by the steel.

Sadly no, I have a triangular window that sits above the patio door and above this are the steels that hold the masonry.

How did you drain the deck and what roof covering did you use?

Thanks so far. I think the builder is quoting a recommended upstand against a British Standard so I may be mistaken. My technical manual, however, does say that the parapet wall should have an upstand of 150mm and this can be reduced to 75mm under the patio door. I can’t see any exclusions in my policy accepting responsibility for a lesser upstand of 30mm. We have had loads of issues with this roof and the warranty has already paid to correct some problems but this has uncovered a number of other factors that I wanted to correct whilst the original work was being completed and not have to do them later. It’s a complicated situation but these are the issues that I have identified: 1. The roof is flat, like really flat, with no fall. This was an error in timber frame design that wasn’t picked up by the architect. The technical manual allows this if the covering comes with its own 10-yr warranty which it does. There is a drain to the side of the deck which allows most of the water to escape. 2. The patio window is fitted into the timber frame and not into the masonry. This meant that the cavity gap had to be sealed. 3. The windows fit the aperture in the frame almost exactly leaving little room for manoeuvre and definitely no room to vastly increase the upstand or give loads of room to correct the lack of a fall.. 4. The existing roof covering is EPDM and this has been incorrectly installed at corners and and joints but has not yet failed. My minimum proposed works to correct the above is as follows: 1. Remove the membrane and deck and construct a fall. 2. Replace EPDM with GRP. 3. Move the patio window outwards to be sealed to masonry and bridge the cavity. The builder is unsure or whether there is enough upstand to allow a suitable fall and suggested the shorter window for the rain splash issue and fall.

The drawings didn’t really show it in much detail but the inspector signed off the deck during a stage inspection. I’m sick of it now and plan to fix (when building work resumes!) asap but a new, shorter, window will be expensive and I want to recoup some of the costs.

Hi all, I completed my self-build 4 years ago and have been living in it fairly happily until last year. The master bedroom is underneath a terrace deck and we suffered significant water ingress causing damage to the ceiling. We identified a number of issues with the EPDM roof covering which the warranty company agreed to pay To correct. When the builder came round to quote, he pointed out that the upstand under the patio door was only about 30mm when it should be at least 75mm to conform with building regs. The short upstand is probably a contributory factor to our leaks but the only sure-fire solution is to replace the patio door with a shorter one to produce the required upstand. The annoying thing is, both the building inspector and the warranty inspector signed the work off! Can I make a claim on my warranty to get the issue corrected? thanks in advance, Nick