Window leak of my own

[ritcho]

Dealing with vinyl single hung windows:
Noticed after a previous day of hard rain 1st floor ceiling appeared to have leaked right at the outer wall.. checked upstairs and couldnt find anything... some folks working on repairs next door came over and took a look.. suggested re-caulking the upstairs windows as it may be rain getting inside the wall and finding its way down... seemed reasonable as the window was in close line to the leaking area..

however.. rained again tonite.. noticed a differnt leak at the TOP edge of downstairs window.. (which is directly below the second floor window).. but no apparent opening on outside where water could get in... very well sealed... and the leak generated more water then could be coming through any of the above floors window caulking.. i gather water was definitley getting in between the walls somewhere coming from the above floor.. again went to upstairs window.. nothing apparant... opened window and noticed the bottom tray where the window closes into.. was full of rainwater.. VERY FULL... now either it is supposed to drain out through somewhere or the water shouldnt be getting in there.. Again, this is where the bottom edge sits into the track when closed.. there is weather striping in the form of a fiber/bristled material strip on outside of window right above the closure... also.. noticed alot of mold in the bottom tray.

So my question.. is it normal to fill with rain water? and if so how does it drain? and if it does drain, can mold be clogging the route? Now, if its not supposed to fill with water what can i do.. seems the weatherstripping was entact? Or, is this not the likley cause of the leak after all?

Again, vinyl windows by Jeld-Wen, flat bottom sill no slope, house built in 2005. Thanks in advance for any assistance.. Ritch in Houston, TX

[HayZee518]

no! the bottom most sealing edges of the window frame where it meets the bottom sill should have weep holes or at least something like a crimp in the plastic frame so water can get out.

[ritcho]

yep.. it was the algae/mold

actually right.. thanks for the response.. i found this out late last night as it continued to bug me... i leaned out the window in the rain and saw a groove at the bottom of the window frame.. barely visible because it was filled in with so much muck.. ran a screwdriver along the groove and all of the sudden it went into the weep hole.. (a small slot within the groove).. after i cleared some black moldy sludge from the weep hole it immediatley began gushing out with water... all my windows had the same thing... such a simple thing that unfortunately may have caused me more than a little inner damage within the wall... its unknown to me how long this has been like this.. but my baseboard below the window is a bit water warped and knowing it went throught the ceiling of the next floor.. still going to have to do some work... the mold is more like algae.. and i guess ill use bleach.. but theres gotta be something i can put in there to keep it from growing back.. i know i did this with my AC back in florida.. algae clogged the drainage and the AC guy gave me some anti-algae pucks... theres an inner trough in the frame and not sure how much more algae/mold is in there... hope this post helps someone else....