Rot in exterior door frame?

We have a three year old house and the door to the deck has rotted. It is rotted out between the door and the frame to the window side of the door about 1/3 of the way.

If exterior grade wood was used (and should have been) what would cause this rot? It should not rot this soon? There is no evidence of termites and it looks like rot due to water/wet.

Any ideas what could have happened and why we would have to fix a door frame this early into a new house? Any way to find out if VM used the wrong grade of wood and this wood is not treated properly?

 

The wood might not have been properly primed. We had to replace half of our porch columns and all of the porch railings because they rotted (our house is seven years old, but the rot has been in evidence for longer. It’s just taken us this long to fix it) We have several other pieces of trim that have been/will be replaced as well. We used Kris Painting service to do the replacements and have signed a contract with him to upkeep the rest of the trim yearly.

We’re having him replace any rotten wood trim with vinyl. The porch columns were replaced with wood because of the cost. According to him, if the new stuff he puts up is properly cared for each year, it will last.

You can try giving Van Metre a call, but if it’s not a structural issue, I don’t know if they’ll do anything about it after the first year is up.

BTW, we asked around, and we’re not the only ones who had this problem. Many of our neighbors are looking at having to replace columns and trim.

 

Thanks - that's good to know. I think we want to sign an upkeep of the trim as well. What did that run you if you don't mind me asking? I looked up a number for Kris painting but it rang and rang then went to a busy signal Anyone else have another person they can recommend? JLC - if you happen to have Kris paintings number can you IM it to me? Thanks.

 

I went back and looked at my paperwork and turns out we didn’t actually sign a contract for him to come out annually, but he had told us we can have him come out every 1-2 years to make sure everything is staying in shape. It’s costing us more this year because of all the repair work we need to have done, but it should be quite a bit cheaper from here on out. *fingers crossed*

The phone number I have for Kris’ Painting Service is the same one that’s on his website: http://krispaintingservice.info/