Clear window weep holes and wash the screens
Annual · typically April
Why it matters
Look at the bottom outside edge of any vinyl or aluminum window and you'll find two or three little slots. Those are weep holes — the drains that let wind-blown rain out of the frame instead of into your wall. Most people don't know they exist, which is why so many are packed with dirt, dead bugs, or paint.
Bonus in your freeze climate: water trapped in a frame doesn't just rot things — it freezes and splits vinyl frames from the inside. The screens ride along in this task because they come off anyway, and a washed screen means you'll actually open the windows during the good weeks.
What skipping it costs
$400–$5,000
Weep holes are the tiny drains that let rain escape the window frame. Plugged with dirt — or caulked shut by a well-meaning painter — the frame becomes a bathtub. Water sits on the sill, finds the wood, and rots it from inside: $400 per sill repair, $2,000–$5,000 when it reaches the framing below. All prevented by poking a hole clear with a zip tie.
Two ways to get it done
Do it yourself
You'll need: Soft brush or old toothbrush, Compressed air or a zip tie, Garden hose, Screwdriver for screen clips, Mild soap.
- Outside, find the weep holes at the bottom edge of each window frame. Poke each one clear with a zip tie or blast it with compressed air. Some have little flapper covers — make sure they swing free.
- Test one: run gentle hose water into the track for ten seconds. It should trickle out the weeps. If it pools in the track, keep clearing.
- Pop the screens, hose them off, scrub gently with soapy water, rinse, and let them dry standing up before they go back in.
- While the screens are off, brush the tracks clean and check the sill corners — probe any soft or discolored wood with a screwdriver tip. Soft wood is your early-warning siren.
- Do not caulk the weep holes. If a previous owner or painter did, cut them open with a utility knife. This is the one place on the house where a gap is the design.
Hire it out
$150–$350National fair range — local labor moves this number.
There's no dedicated trade for this — it rides along with a window-cleaning visit, which runs $150–$350 for a typical house. If you're hiring the glass done anyway, tell them you want tracks brushed and weeps cleared, and ask them to flag any sill that's holding water.
The thing to survive is the free-window-inspection funnel: window-replacement companies price whole-house jobs in the tens of thousands, so their inspections find whole-house problems. One rotten sill is a carpentry repair, not a referendum on all your windows.
Ask the tech
- Are you clearing the weep holes on every window, or just washing glass?
- Did you find any sills holding water, and can you show me which ones?
- Any screens beyond re-screening — and what's re-screening versus replacement cost?
Red flags you're being upsold
- 'Your windows are shot, you need full replacement' from a window company doing a 'free inspection.' Fogged glass and stiff sashes are repairable line items, not a $20,000 project.
- Caulking quotes that include sealing the bottom edge of the window — that's where the weeps live. Anyone who caulks a window shut all the way around doesn't understand windows.
- Re-screening quoted at replacement prices. A re-screen is $20–40 per window at a hardware store.
Second opinion time: Any whole-house window replacement pitch that started as a cleaning or inspection visit. Windows are replaced one rot problem at a time, not by the truckload.
The call
DIY, no contest — it's a toothbrush and a garden hose. There is no version of this worth a service call on its own.