Thanks for your interest.
Water mainly inside stucco but also some inside along bottom of the wall, weird because there is a brick ledge.
My GC tells me the ledger was bolted with redheads into concrete, right on unfinished rastra, then stucco was applied on exposed wall. Finally I would say that my contractor made sure of nothing , this house was really a learning experience for us...I will ask my husband to post a few pictures asap.

Since Rastra is very porous, basically a very light concrete block, I doubt whether the voids being properly filled with concrete is relevant to the leakage issue.

The idea of doing a controlled water test is a good one.  I would start at one end of the deck, away from the doors.  If water penetration appears, you know what the problem is.  Based on your description, my bet is that the ledger is the issue, not the doors.

As an aside, you say that this is a 2 story, but the Rastra walls are 10f high, so I am not visualizing your house very well.  Is one of the stories of different construction...or is this condition at a gabled end?

Keep us posted.

xexpat

If your ledger is attached with tapcons directly to the ICF block, that would be my guess as to the water intrusion site.  All of the water draining down the gable end would have to cross this point and could infiltrate the raw block.  I worked on a project that addressed this issue by using traditional stucco flashing at this point.  It was essentially a large L flashing with a metal mesh on the wall side that extended up the block.  The ledger was attached and then the stucco was applied over the flashing, which in turn wrapped over the deck so that water would not drain back towards the legder.

Another project had a 3" drip edge formed into the Rastra.  Raw Rastra block was ripped into trim pieces and added right above the ledger.  The trim was stuccoed into place.  The rain runs down the side and then drips out onto the deck away from the ledger.

I think I like the flashing idea better and this could be accomplished with L flashing and EIFs type fiberglass mesh, however, it is a solution that must be incorporated into the deck when built. 

After construction is complete, I'm not sure what the remedy would be.  The very best caulking, applied behind a flashing strip, might be the only solution.

If water enters the Rastra block, it drains down through.  If given enough distance (more than a couple feet), water can migrate the 10" block thickness to the building interior.  I've designed my house in Rastra, and I have to admit that as I'm getting ready to build I am still thinking about the window drainage issues.  My present thought is to stucco the openings, install the windows, and then a second stucco to seal them in place. 


Mark Fleming

Daniela,

I don't have a good visual of how your water is migrating, so I can't give an opinion.  Rastra is too pourous to allow much capillary action (presently being discussed in another thread), which means the entrance point is likely higher than the interior wet spot.  The other method by which water travels "the wrong way" is through pressure differentials.  If your leak is on the windward side of the house, it's possible that air pressure can make the water travel up and sideways.  Again, I think that Rastra would likely be too pourous to really transfer water up or sideways more than a few inches.  Although I've never tested it, I would guess that intrusion at about a 45 degree angle would be about the maximum.

When tracing leaks, the two common mistakes are thinking that the water you see is 1) coming from somewhere close and 2) that the water is from a leak.  It's likely coming from above the leak, but that's anywhere above within the 45 degree angle.  The second mistaken "leak" is condensation from the inside, which shouldn't be likely with your material, unless you have high moisture and maybe a metal thermal break inside the wall.

Mark Fleming