Tag Archives: finish coat

Stucco Colours Fading

Posted by Admin on September 9, 2011 None comments

Stucco (EIFS) comes in a literally limitless number of possible colours, as home owners and architects are able to pick out of a catalog or even have colour swatches or samples matched. Like any coloured exterior product however, stucco colours will change over time due to exposure to sunlight (UV radiation).

Fading Stucco Colour

The darker portion is the area that was originally protected by a canopy.

What can be done about this? Nothing really. It’s just a fact of life. If the situation is apparent enough (as in the top image) because of a permanent change (removal of a canopy), the wall can simply be re-painted using an EIFS paint if the finish coat is still in good condition. Repainting the stucco is far less expensive than going through a full stucco repair, which would be unnecessary in a case like this. This can actually be an opportunity to entirely change the colour of the stucco if a new, updated look is desired. Trying to apply a colour that is close to the ‘faded’ one is pointless, as it will also change over time.

EIFS Colour Fading

The portion that was protected by the canopy is closer to the original colour.

Faded stucco causes no concern about the integrity of the system itself, the change is simply an aesthetic one. What’s important to realize is that if a patch were to be done using the original pail of finish coat, the patch would be closer in colour to the portion of wall that was protected from sunlight.

Darker colours generally tend to change more over time than lighter colours because of the quantity of pigment in the coating. Light colours are just as susceptible however to the change due to exposure to sunlight.

Supplies Required for EIFS / Stucco Installations

Posted by Admin on April 16, 2011 None comments

All of this equipment and supplies would be familiar to an Exterior Insulation Finish Systems contractor, however a home owner looking to do their own shed or garage might not realize they need many of the tools required. While we do not recommend EIFS as a DIY project, we would still like to be a resource for the home owners who have a difficult time finding the information. Some typical tools required include:

  • EIFS Materials
  • Mouldings and Trim
  • Clean, potable water
  • A power mixing tool and power extension cord
  • Trowels and finish-coat float
  • Hot Knife
  • Scaffolding and polyethylene
  • Safety Equipment (gloves, eyewear, hardhat, steeltoe shoes, respiratory mask)

We won’t get into the procedures and techniques in this article, but will touch on the various tools and equipment required.

EIFS Materials

The EIFS materials are the basics of the supplies. Typical providers of stucco in Toronto include Durabond and Durock, depending on what part of the city you’re from. Both companies supply high quality, reliable material that if properly installed will last decades.

The materials will cost you roughly $4 per square foot, but will not come with a warranty unless installed by a skilled applicator. While an experienced contractor might take a week to complete 1,000 square feet, you can expect to take a month or two to learn the basics and complete the installation.

Mouldings and Window Trim

When renovating a home or a smaller building (such as a shed or detached garage), you have the opportunity to not only drastically change the look with the EIFS material, but also with decorative items. There are multiple suppliers of varying quality in Toronto who manufacture trim and mouldings specifically for EIFS. These mouldings are manufactured from the same components as the wall itself – styrofoam, fibreglass mesh and base coat. Because of this, they are light weight, attractive, affordable and most importantly durable. Unlike wood trim which will rot and degrade over time, the stucco trim is made from inorganic composite materials which means that they do not support organic growth.

Moulding and trim will cost around $30-$40 per 8-foot piece from a supplier such as Decoramould Exterior Mouldings. The average window will cost anywhere from $60-$100 in material, and 8-foot stacks of quoins for the corners of your walls will run you around the same price.

Clean, Potable Water

The water is simple to acquire if you’re working on your own home. It will be used for the adhesive/basecoat, floating the finish coat and for cleaning your tools.

The cost likely won’t even be noticed on your water bill.

Power Mixing tool and Extension Cord

A power mixing tool will be required to mix the basecoat and the finish coat if it has been sitting for too long. Because you’re mixing cement, a regular drill will not be up to the task. A heavy duty drill is required  to effectively mix and not burn out the motor.

Heavy Duty Drills will run about $200 brand new, or can sometimes be found at re-use hardware stores. A favourite brand of our applicators is Makita. While the re-used ones might not be reliable in the long term, you should be able to get your money out of it and complete your job. Alternatively, you could rent one from Home Depot, but be wary about the project taking longer than you expected.

Trowels, Rasps and Finish Float

Trowels are the tools of the EIFS / stucco trade. They are used to scoop the supplies and plaster them onto the wall. A little bit of experience is required as far as the technique goes and you may want to start on a less-noticeable area of your project until you get the jist of it. Expect a lot of the material to fall off the sides until you get used to dealing with the viscous material.

Rasps are large tools used to sand or “rasp” the styrofoam. Rasping is required to ensure the walls are smooth so that odd shadows are not created. It creates a LOT of tiny bits of styrofoam, that will spread all over your property as well as your neighbours. It might be a good idea to purchase or rent a small portable vac to do cleanups after rasping.

The finish float is not the same as the steel trowel – it is typically made of plastic and has a more textured face to it. Many contractors work in pairs – with one picking the finish coat up with a steel trowel and globbing it onto the wall, while the more experienced contractor smooths it to cover the surface with the desired texture. How to smooth the material and the installation is beyond the scope of this article, but if at any point you are willing to pay an expert to do a part of the installation, let it be the finish coat. Aside from being the most expense component of an EIF system, it is also the one that affects the final appearance the most.

Trowels run between $20-$30 from the hardware store or a specialty supply store. Rasps will cost $60-$80 and can only be found from the specialty suppliers. You should be able to pick these up from the EIFS supplier themselves.

Hot Knife

A hot knife is a tool used to cut clean lines into styrofoam. It will be required if you’re doing a 2 storey home, or if you have particularly long walls. Hot knives are used to cut control joints into the insulation to prevent the wall from cracking in the wrong location. More information can be found in our article on Hot Knives.

These could possibly be rented, but the author has never seen a place that has them for rent. A hot knife will be around $200 to purchase brand new.

Scaffolding and Polyethylene

How are you going to reach your bungalow/garage soffit, or the top of the wall on your 2-storey home? You weren’t planning on using a ladder were you? Leaning a ladder on styrofoam will damage it, even with the fibreglass mesh and base coat already on. Scaffolding or a lift of some sort (whether it’s an all-terrain scissor lift, or a boom lift) will be required to get at those high places. Either of these are typically rented, and a home owner would likely be safer going with scaffolding.

Polyethylene is thin sheets of plastic. Large quantities are required to cover windows, vegetation/landscaping and even to protect materials.

Scaffolding rental would cost about $100/week from a place like Stevenson’s Rental for the quantity required to do your home yourself. Be careful about getting EIFS materials caked on it, as the rental location might charge you for cleaning it. An enormous role of polyethylene will cost about $20 and last you the entire project.

Safety Equipment

While it goes without saying that you should take all possible precautions when working with liquid materials, many people take this aspect lightly. I won’t lecture, just say to be cautious. Pails of finish coat that have been sitting around for a while might have gases trapped under the lid that could make you nautious. When pouring the dry cement into a bucket of water to be mixed, a lot of the powder will billow up like smoke. Aside from having the inside of your lungs encased in cement being a bad idea, there are tiny fibers and acrylics in the basecoat (that help the durability once on the wall) that can also cause problems. Even without inhaling, cement itself is a corrosive material, that will irritate skin and cause serious damage to eyes and membranes.

All together, an investment of about $100 will protect your health and keep you from visiting the hospital. WHMIS labels/documents should nonetheless be read and be on-hand.

Overall Costs

While you might be saving yourself hard-cash going out of your pocket to pay for labour, the tiny expenses required to complete a DIY EIFS project add up to a not-so-tiny amount. Depending on the size of your project, it can actually turn out to be cheaper to hire someone who has all the necessary tools and equipment to do the work for you. It will without a doubt however, take much longer (and more frustration) to do it yourself than to hire someone, but can be a rewarding experience.

Are you considering or have you done your own stucco renovation? If so, please feel free to share your experience here!

EIFS Cracking Due to Lack of Mesh

Posted by Admin on February 7, 2011 None comments

Exterior Insulation Finish Systems incorporate a coated fibreglass mesh designed to allow flexibility due to expansion and contraction, and prevent the base coat and finish coat from cracking. In situations where the base coat and finish coat crack, water is able to get into wall system where it can and will go through freeze/thaw cycles – which over time, cause further deterioration of the EIFS. This mesh needs to be applied where ever there is a penetration or break in the EIFS, and over the entire surface of the insulation. In the image below it is apparent where the contractor decided not to apply the mesh, to save the “hassle” of cutting a small section where the soffit is.

You can clearly see the edges of the full 2′ x 4′ insulation board used in EIFS due to the fissuring of the base coat and finish coat over just a few years. Without the mesh to deal with the stresses and maintain the integrity of the coating, the base coat and finish coat have both cracked. While the location (a small corner of a soffit) is not likely to cause massive damage to the building because of moisture having a means of ingress, it’s both an eyesore and a potential problem nonetheless.

What was done correctly on the project was incorporating the drip edge. By extending the EIFS that makes up the wall slightly below the soffit, any water that runs down the wall is forced to fall to the ground instead of running along the underside of the soffit due to surface tension. This leads one to believe that the building was properly designed by the architect, and the fault of the improper installation lies on the contractor. Because this is just one building in a large commercial complex surrounding one of Toronto’s largest malls, one wonders if the other buildings suffer the same lack of proper care.

EIFS/Stucco On ICF

Posted by Admin on October 27, 2010 None comments

With rising concerns over global warming and energy efficiency, construction materials like EIFS (“stucco”) and ICF (Insulated Concrete Forms) have become increasingly popular. Both incorporate varying thicknesses of insulation to decrease the amount of heat lost (during the winter) or gained (during the summer), thereby lowering the amount of heat that needs to be generated/removed. This not only means less fossil fuels are used, but that what you pay to heat and cool your home is decreased. While EIFS is seen in both new construction and renovations, ICF is primarily new construction, but the two products are not mutually exclusively. Actually, one of the larger EPS manufacturers in Toronto supplies the insulation for both products.

EIFS being applied on ICF

EIFS has been around for decades in various forms, while ICF has really only begun to take off in the last 10 years or so. EIFS newest form incorporates a weather barrier with drainage which has been shown to be the most effective at managing moisture, compared with any other cladding. ICF lacks the weather barrier and drainage channels to properly accommodate moisture that will at some point get into the wall.

So what is the correct method of applying EIFS to ICF? All joints in the ICF should be taped with EIFS mesh, and a full cementitious weather barrier applied. This surface should serve as the base of which to apply a full EIFS system including the insulation and vertical channels of adhesive. This provides a drainage layer to ensure the insulation will last as long as possible. ICF being styrofoam itself, one could even groove out vertical channels into the ICF forms through which moisture could drain out when placing your EPS board layer on top.

Adding another layer of insulation will increase the R-value, though typically not to an appreciable degree. ICF walls themselves provide more-than-adequate resistance to thermal transmission through walls. Ensuring that areas such as the roof is properly insulated, and windows are properly sealed would be an intelligent idea, as they would likely be the weak points on a home.

More often than not, what is typically done is to simply apply the mesh, basecoat and finish coat directly over top of the outer layer of insulation in the ICF. While the styrofoam used in the ICF is suitable to apply EIFS over, contractors should make sure it is free from dust, dirt and grease (it’s not uncommon to have dirty ICF forms). Doing this turns the EIFS into a barrier system as opposed to a Dual-Barrier, it will entirely lack a drainage layer which is the key to ensuring walls last as long as possible.

From a design standpoint, it would be simple to add stucco reveals right into the ICF itself as a unique architectural feature.

What is EIFS

Posted by Admin on May 19, 2009 None comments

What is EIFS? This is a question that is easy to answer, but difficult to show. Adex Systems (a manufacturer out of Montreal) has put together a FANTASTIC video showing what the basics of the EIFS system. The visual aspect of the video makes it much clearer what constitutes the various layers and what they look like.

Here is the video: http://www.adexsystems.com/video/Adexres-rs-en.htm.
And here is the overview and specifications for the system: http://documentation.adexsystems.com/index.php/eng/content/view/full/1271.

Note that most large manufacturers have an identical system using similar materials. Adex has just done the best job of clearly laying it out.

Also note that PVC mouldings are not very common, and more often for EIFS, stucco trim such as Decoramould is nearly always used.