Who's at fault here? LEAK! Need some help/advice

nealtw said:

2 ft might be a good thing , may have to unbolt it and pull it back from the house to work on the wall.
Is the wall below the deck a wood wall with siding or concrete, Is the basement finished wall and ceiling?

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nealtw said:

2 ft might be a good thing , may have to unbolt it and pull it back from the house to work on the wall.
Is the wall below the deck a wood wall with siding or concrete, Is the basement finished wall and ceiling?

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im not entirely sure about the wall behind/under the deck because it looks like the siding may have been cut out when the joict plate was installed for the deck. Why they went so high is beyond me. Another weird thing is the piece of "L channel" that's installed on the top of the deck. This I think confirms my thinking that they cut the siding away when built the deck. I've attached a few more pics for you to see these areas I'm talking about. First pic is from my initial inspection report so nevermind the red arrow I'm just trying to show how high the deck sits above the siding. Second and third pics show the L channel along the top side of deck and last pic shows in bottom right the foundation concrete to help get an idea of where things are at. And lastly, to answer your other question about the basement, the basement is fully finished ceiling and walls. I pulled the carpet up down there and there's no sign of water seepage, yet.

See all that horriblily applied caulking, if you did not do that someone did that knew the doorway was leaking, but had no clue what they where doing and sealed the wrong area.
This is such a common building 101 mistake all caused from not building the deck free standing (not attached to the house) , building the deck about 6" below the threshold or at least properly flashing the ledger and door opening .
In my lifetime I've repaired no less than 100 of these, in the neighborhood right now there's been 5 homes already done, and 3 being worked on at this time all caused the exact same issues your having.
It's funny when I see homeowners or even builders building new decks wrong, and being a know it all yankee I mention the error in there ways the standard reply is "that's the way we always build them, been doing it this way for (blank) years never been an issue".
Never been an issue for them means the check cleared and they moved on and never had to see all the damage it caused!
I've seen many far worst than your, some it rotted out the sheathing, rim joist, mud sill and even the floor joist.
The worst one I ever saw was so bad the only thing keeping them from falling through the floor was the carpet.
From under the house I could see the whole bottom of the aluminum threshold because all the wood had rotted away.

That steps handrail is also done completely wrong. Indoor outdoor carpeting over wood decking is a 100% sure way to rot out the decking.
Cutting the siding would not have have been an issue if they had of removed it first and waterproofed the wall with something like Storm and ice Shield.
Decking should never have had been installed tight to the side of the house, if you install it back beyond the rim joist it will have a drain plane.
Where's the required overhang on the the stair treads, should have been around 1".

joecaption said:

See all that horriblily applied caulking,

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Actually I did that myself in a panic as it was pouring out and kids were alone in the house while daddy discovered the leak. I can actually caulk neat as a razor's edge lol. Anyway I'm gonna have to get in there and do some exploratory dissecting of the surrounding area and see how bad the damage is. I will report back

I don't know where you are at but this might not be the weather for pulling everything out.
The deck needs to be lowered and likely moved away from the house .
So the deck ledger attached to the house is bolted, screwed or nailed in some matter, we will want to know what that is and what beams and posts are holding it up. I would start with just removing the lattice work and stairs so you can get good pictures of everything down the so we can develope a plan.

nealtw said:

I don't know where you are at but this might not be the weather for pulling everything out.
The deck needs to be lowered and likely moved away from the house .
So the deck ledger attached to the house is bolted, screwed or nailed in some matter, we will want to know what that is and what beams and posts are holding it up. I would start with just removing the lattice work and stairs so you can get good pictures of everything down the so we can develope a plan.

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Copy that! I will get going on it and report back very soon. Thank you so much!

Billbill84 said:

Copy that! I will get going on it and report back very soon. Thank you so much!

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One method for moving deck