THE RESIDENTIAL RIP-OFF 

How to keep confusion between "wet" and "rot"
from trashing another good EIFS cladding.

by Dominic Berretta 

For once, let's get the rip-off mentality out of the EIFS industry.

To do this, we need to address the fact that most of the EIFS homeowners feel they have been ripped off.  How do we counter the image?  By putting ourselves in an offensive mode rather than defensive.

After the "Dateline" story broke in March, my phone rang off the hook.  You could hear the panic in the callers' voices wanting to know if tearing off the EIFS cladding was their only option to save their homes.  The requests for quotations to strip these homes were alarming.

What most people saw when they viewed this program was a "bad stucco job" being removed because there was no way to save it, or nothing good about it, or nothing worth saving.  As one homeowner put it to me, "I was ripped off when the builder sold me this home and now to save it will require another rip-off."

When you couple this with the current radio ads from another prominent exterior cladding, the fuel is present for a hot fire.  That fire is not only consuming a lot of good EIFS installation, it's also burning years of past recognition of the EIFS and stucco industry as being a durable and reliable product.  Speak with any EIFS homeowner and get his opinion of our industry now.

It has been my experience that improperly detailed EIFS homes could have moisture intrusion problems.  But if they do, the problems usually occur only in certain areas, and rarely does the damage exceed 10 percent of the total wall area of the home.   What most people watching the program did not see was the amount of good EIFS cladding that was being ripped off.  It's a lot like burning down the barn to get rid of the rats.

Speaking with Ray Lynch, president of the Exterior Design Institute, at our last training seminar about this matter, I presented the question to him in regard to how many EIFS homes are actually out there.  His educated estimate was between 500 and 6,000.   I have heard higher and lower numbers,  but I believe Lynch is very near the mark.  Think of the environmental impact and economical loss we will suffer if 50 percent of these homes are allowed to be ripped off due to a knee-jerk reaction to negative publicity.  Assuming 250,000 of these homes are ripped off and each of them has 4,000-plus board feet of EIFS wall, we will have wasted our resources to produce 1 billion board feet of material as well as the labor to install this material and the cost to replace it.

Now our already stressed landfills are going to receive 1 billion or more board feet of waste building materials that are 90-percent non-biodegradable.  Our grandchildren will inherit this problem.

To minimize the negative impact that our outside influences have (and are having) on the EIFS and stucco industry, we must not abandon the existing homes, but must aggressively diagnose, repair and maintain them.  The EIFS industry is based in the stucco tradition and it will overcome the bad installations and learn from its mistakes, and it will survive.

My involvement with the plastering industry began many years ago.  I have moved through the various stages from serving as an apprentice with the then-Memphis, Tenn.'s local union #133, where I was taught not only a trade, but a craft and an art.

Needless to say, drywall replaced plaster as the interior material of choice.   Many plastering contractors moved to related building trades to earn a living.   Plastering was degraded to locker room ceilings and toilet stalls.  I followed the trend and found employment elsewhere.

Somewhere in the late 1970's, I was hired by a local contractor to attend a Dryvit Training Seminar being taught by Mr. Dick Hopkins in Columbus, Ga.  I was to learn all there was to know about the product, bring the information back to Memphis, and instruct the company's crew on its proper installation.

From that date until present, except for a few years on the West Coast, where I held the position of engineering and construction manager for MCI's Northwest region, I have been involved in the EIFS industry, as an applicator, a general contractor and a distributor.  In the early 1990's, I became involved in the inspection and repairs to stucco and EIFS homes.

As a distributor, I co-sponsored many EIFS training seminars for architects, specifiers and applicators.  In doing so, I realized that EIFS was a very good system, providing certain installation guidelines were followed.  Nearly all EIFS manufacturers of Class PB (polymer based) had the same basic concept of keeping water out of EIFS homes.  The area that I feel the manufacturers overlooked was their assumption that windows do not leak.

My experience has taught me that about 50 percent of the water intrusion into the wall cavity comes from the windows.  Others have similar opinions, but I think all the experts are close to this figure.  The other 50 percent of water intrusion is spread throughout the details, or the lack of details.  If a home does not have diverter flashing properly installed, beware of the area below where it should have been.

In the mid 1990's, I began reading articles of EIFS failures.  I also began getting faxes and phone calls relating to these problems.  I was often asked to inspect and quote on repairs of existing EIFS homes.  Several homes I stripped and applied a stucco system on metal lath in place of the EIFS.  In doing one such project, I took note of how many times we had to have a pull on the 30-cubic-yard dumpster to keep the site clean.  This is the time I decided to devote my efforts to save the existing EIFS homes.

Request for EIFS inspections and quotations on repairs were picking up and so were inquiries into my qualifications as an inspector.  The best and, at that time, the only certification program available to the public was through EDI.  I decided to attend the class in Las Vegas in 1996.  My only other certifiable qualification was my general contractor's license.  In researching what type of license was required in Tennessee to inspect existing homes, I was amazed to find "none required".

If you wanted to inspect new construction you had to be licensed as a general contractor in the classification of work you were inspecting.  I received the EDI certification to inspect new work.

However, I soon realized that most of my inspections were for existing work and there was no real protocol available to inspect existing homes.

As the public became more aware of the EIFS "problems"--and we in the industry know it's not the EIFS, but it's still our problem--I, like so many other EIFS inspectors, purchased the best moisture detection equipment on the market.  After reading and reviewing various formats for inspections, I began developing my own format and program.  My first efforts were based entirely on moisture analysis and nothing more.  During the course of a particular inspection, I was not finding a great deal of moisture when suddenly my awl poked completely through the substrate, which was exterior gypsum sheathing under the corner of a casement window.  Something was wrong, but how did I report this?  After all, I was looking for moisture, not rot.   I mean, the whole industry was hung up on moisture and they had done a good job of introducing me to the fact that elevated moisture was the most critical aspect related to the failure of EIFS homes.

As I thought about what happened, I wondered how many inspections I had done that had no moisture indications above the allowed percentages because it had not rained in six weeks, but actually had deteriorated sheathing or sheathing and frame damage.  And in the reverse fashion, I can recall one particular instance that I detected an elevated moisture level under an upstairs foyer window.  I neglected to note the window was ajar and had been for several months because the painter neglected to close it and the homeowner had no ladder to reach it.  I didn't close it either.  The home was on the market and when the buyer read the report, he backed out of the contract which was contingent on a satisfactory moisture test.  Lucky for me, the home sold the next week and I didn't have to buy it.

A footnote to this episode is that I reported that I had also probed the area with an ice pick and that the sheathing felt firm and that I could not detect any frame damage.

How long had it been leaking?  If the water got into the wall yesterday, it could read over 50 percent.  I heard this number quoted on "Dateline" as the magic number for wood rot to occur.  This is a very dangerous assumption for all parties, owners, buyers and sellers to accept.  The reason is obvious. Rot does not mean wet.   Wet does not mean rot.

At this point, I also realized that my ice pick test wasn't relative.  There was no way to gauge my "firm". I weighed only 150 pounds.  Some big husky guy would probably say this was soft. 

I put a scale on an ice pick.  I named the contraption the Structural Resistance Tester, and I have found it to be very useful in conducting tests on existing homes and buildings.  By properly using this tool, you can locate deteriorated sheathing and frame.  By recording this information, you can direct the repair contractor as to the amount of system, sheathing and frame they should quote on replacing in doing the other necessary retrofitting and maintenance to the home.

As its name implies, this simple tool detects the resistance to the sheathing and/or frame by applying pressure to a 1/8 inch stainless steel probe and recording the results of the test.
 
 

Published in Walls and Ceilings Magazine
July 1999