Repairing water rot

Homerepairguy

I have some window sills that have water rot due to lack of maintenance. I've been reading about repairing water rot by digging out the rotted wood, apply a fungicide to stop the rot, applying a wood hardener and then filling with Bondo or an epoxy product.

QUESTIONS:

1. What's a good fungicide to use? Brand names would be helpful.

2. Any recommendations for a wood hardener?

3. Will automotive Bondo work to fill out the rotted areas? I don't know if it will expand/contract like the wood will. If not, what should I use instead?

Thanks,
HRG

itsreallyconc

chlorox,,, west epoxy system work'd on sailboat

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Bondo

Ayuh,.... automotive Antifreeze....

joecaption

Got a picture?
Why not new windows and never have to deal with it again?
I just hate playing wack a mole with old wooden windows.

oh'mike

Where's the rot---I rebuild windows frequently---never used filler--always cut out bad section and replaced with new wood----

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Homerepairguy

Thanks guys. I'll follow the advice to just replace the window frames. A lot more work but while further researching the filler method, I read a post elsewhere where the guy filled the rot only to return 2 years later to find about an inch or two of rot around the filled area.

HRG

joecaption

Believe it not in a lot of cases it's not going to take much longer to replace them.
The time spend digging it out, injecting the hardner, waiting for it to dry, applying the filler, sanding, priming, two coats of paint all take time.

wrongdave

Some may think this overkill, but when I replace exterior wood trim these days, I typically go with cedar or PVC for things like sills and the trim that contacts the sills. Having lived in my house for almost 30 years and experienced rot in new wood repairs I've done in the past, I've become very leery of using new pine in these applications. I will also prime the cedar on all sides before installing.
One problem with cedar though is it sometimes comes rather wet. You want to try to find dry stuff, or buy it in advance and put it somewhere where it can dry out.

That said, I have used filler for exterior repairs with good results. I don't think sills are the best application for that though. Plus, I think they stopped selling the wood hardener/stabilizer I used to get. It was some really toxic stuff.

hand drive

do you mean window sills? The piece that the window sash sits on with a 15 degree slope usually and it comes in two parts, sill and sill nosing.
If you dig into the the wood rot and the spot gets bigger than a golf ball consider replacing it with a new cpvc window sill. It will help to know the anatomy of a window unit before attempting to extract the rotten one, lots of hidden nails that need cutting .

When was the house built? I'm currently replacing 3 1/2" by 7 1/2" window sills on an historical home, 4 more to replace up on the cupola and they are done. I have melted my sawz all getting the old sills out and I've got the extra heavy duty version sawz all tools,tools

Homerepairguy

Yes, the major rot is in the bottom window sills right where the vertical frames attach, with some rot at the bottom of the vertical frames. It appears that the joints of the verticals with the sill sucked water due to capillary action and was the root cause of the water rot. The areas of the bottom sill between the vertical frames don't have water rot.

I'm very familar with how the frames were built since I worked as a carpenter for 2 years and assembled milled frames on site and installed them. It would take some work with nail pullers to remove the window frames so I'll look into using my Sawzall for cutting the nails holding the frame to the wall instead.

I'll check out the cpvc window sills and see if there are models suitable for our windows. If I end up making wooden sills, when I assemble the new window frames, I'm thinking about using liquid wood hardener on all of the joints prior to assembly to prevent the capillary action from starting up rot again.

What do all of you think about ways to prevent capillary action at vertical to sill joints from inducing water rot?

Thanks,
HRG