I have bought a new house and became a bit concerned about the slope of the window sills.
As an example, a window sill with a depth of 120mm only has a slope of 11mm, which would mean 1:11.
I found the following text in Hus AMA 08 on the subject:
Window sills should be constructed with a minimum slope of 1:4 (14°).
What does this mean?
Does it mean that the house builder must comply with AMA or is it just a recommendation they can ignore?
Here, it is about the slope being only about 1/3 of what it MINIMALLY should be?
As an example, a window sill with a depth of 120mm only has a slope of 11mm, which would mean 1:11.
I found the following text in Hus AMA 08 on the subject:
Window sills should be constructed with a minimum slope of 1:4 (14°).
What does this mean?
Does it mean that the house builder must comply with AMA or is it just a recommendation they can ignore?
Here, it is about the slope being only about 1/3 of what it MINIMALLY should be?
HusAMA is only intended to facilitate the work of creating a description of performance, for example, so that contracts become unambiguous.
It is neither law nor standard.
It is neither law nor standard.
We have had an inspection where it was determined that 90% of the window sills and drip edges have a slope between 0.5 and 4 degrees (in a couple of places there is a reverse slope). The builder says that the only requirement is that the flashings do not have a reverse slope. The inspector was going to try to find out what could be considered a reasonable slope as he didn't seem entirely sure that it was good as it was, but I haven't heard anything yet. What do you think, what slope might be reasonable to have?
What slope did you order?
Does the slope you received match what you ordered?
If you didn't order any specific slope, you probably can't expect to get it either.
It's not even mandatory to have window sills.
So in the end, everything depends on what was in your contract!
Does the slope you received match what you ordered?
If you didn't order any specific slope, you probably can't expect to get it either.
It's not even mandatory to have window sills.
So in the end, everything depends on what was in your contract!
The contract, in hindsight, is incredibly general with very overarching descriptions without details; when buying a house from one of the larger construction companies in Sweden, which also states in their property descriptions that they build with good materials and good methods, one unfortunately believed it.
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On the houses we manufacture, we have a 15° slope on the sheet metal, so I think it sounds stingy on your house. Most manufacturers of window sills I've seen usually use that as some sort of standard slope.
I felt compelled to check what I had set myself. I haven't measured anything but just used a slope that I thought looked good and "normal." So it's approximately 1:5 (about 11-12°), which is slightly less than what hus-ama states.
But as mentioned, it looks good.
A slope less than about 1:8 - 1:10 must be questionable, I think. But I'm not quite sure what legal grounds one might use to support their demands and complaints.
You might need to push your inspector a bit more. If you get a statement from there that it's too little, then at least you have a card to play with. Are you withholding any money?
But as mentioned, it looks good.
A slope less than about 1:8 - 1:10 must be questionable, I think. But I'm not quite sure what legal grounds one might use to support their demands and complaints.
You might need to push your inspector a bit more. If you get a statement from there that it's too little, then at least you have a card to play with. Are you withholding any money?
pNow they have "fixed" all the window sills, which means they now have a slope of between 12° - 25°, varying a bit on each sill, and some have a variation from the right edge to the left edge of up to 6° on the same sill, a little twisted, and they've made some strange notches around the drip edges that look really poor. The construction company had, among other things, hired labor from a firm called Extra Arbetskraft http://www.eaab.nu/, and one can wonder if that man was really a carpenter because the result wasn't very fun. Let's see now if they plan to fix it again voluntarily or if an additional inspection will be necessary first, sigh!