Stucco is a wonderful wall finish that can last for decades. Its big weakness is leaks from window penetrations, especially if the windows weren’t carefully flashed. (The building codes have very picky requirements for flashing, and I don’t know if all buildings at The Villages were built to that level. The codes have changed a lot in the past twenty years.) This is less of a problem with houses that have wide eaves, two to four feet, but that can lead to a wind lift problem. If the tops of windows are high enough so they are sheltered by the eaves, that helps. Horizontal rain is a problem. What often happens is that water runs down a wall when it rains, then into the crack between the wall and the top of the window frame, down the sides, then into the wall structure below the window. (Flashing is designed to keep that water from getting in and to guide out any water that does get in.) If you have a concrete block house covered with stucco, that isn’t too serious. If you have a wood frame house behind the stucco, sometimes that water reaches the wood, which makes it swell and even rot. When the wood swells, it can crack the stucco. Often a crack in stucco isn’t a big deal, but the water running into the wall CAN be a big deal. Replacing a window frame without replacing the flashing opens the way to more leaking, but replacing the flashing means pulling out about four to six inches of stucco all the way around, and it isn’t easy to do a perfect repair and match the color. It’s SO much better to do it right the first time.
One thing to check is whether any water is landing on your stucco or windows when your sprinklers are running. While stucco is pretty forgiving about water, it should not be sprinkled on a regular basis. It may be that the crack has occurred in a place where the sprinkler is wetting the wall.
While caulking a crack can make it hard to see, caulking a crack below a window caused by water getting behind the stucco just keeps the water behind the stucco, where it can do more damage.
If water is NOT getting in from the top of your window but is getting in from horizontal rain that hits the lower window or the horizontal crack below that window, here is a cheap fix that might work. Go to Lowe’s and buy an 8’ length of aluminum or vinyl flashing. Cheap. Cut it with scissors or tin snips or a utility knife so it’s an inch longer than the window frame on each side. Tape the TOP of this piece of flashing to the BOTTOM of the window or the window frame. You might get by with a piece of 2” packing tape to hold it in place. Better is a piece of aluminum tape (not aluminum colored duck tape). Tape only the top, not the bottom. If water hits the window, it runs onto the flashing and is guided away from the wall. Because the flashing is open at the bottom, water doesn’t get stuck behind it. Then, if you caulk the crack after the wall has dried out, you are less likely to cause a problem. This sort of flashing is available in several colors.
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