Services / 03

Stucco & EIFS Systems

An exterior wall in Manitoba goes through roughly a hundred freeze-thaw cycles a year. A stucco system either accounts for that or it fails.

Stucco failures are almost never finish-coat failures. They are water failures, and they show up at the base of the wall, around the windows, and anywhere somebody trusted a bead of sealant to do a flashing job.

Traditional three-coat

Metal lath over a drainage plane, then a scratch coat keyed into the lath, a brown coat that trues the plane, and a finish coat carrying the texture and colour. Each coat needs time and moisture to cure. Rushing that is the most common single cause of the map cracking visible on walls only a few years old.

EIFS

An exterior insulation and finish system starts with a fluid-applied air and water-resistive barrier at the sheathing, then rigid insulation board, then fibreglass mesh embedded in a base coat, then an acrylic finish. The insulation runs continuously across the framing rather than between it, which closes the thermal bridge that a stud-bay-only assembly leaves wide open.

We install drained assemblies only. The barrier-style EIFS of the 1990s had no way to let incidental water back out, and that is the source of nearly every horror story attached to the acronym. A drainage cavity and a properly detailed base track are not optional in this climate.

Diagnosis and repair

This is the work most crews avoid. Cracking on an existing wall has a cause, and recoating over it just buys a season or two. We open the wall where it is failing, find the path the water is taking, correct the detail, cut back to sound material, re-mesh, and recoat. Colour-matching a repair into an existing elevation is its own skill and we do it rather than recoating the whole building by default.

We also take on parging and foundation coating, which is usually where a homeowner first notices something is wrong.

Season and scheduling

Exterior cementitious work needs temperatures above about five degrees and protection from direct sun and wind while it cures. In Winnipeg that means a working season, and it means hoarding and heat if the schedule pushes into colder months.

What we specify

AssemblyTraditional 3-coat over lath, or drained EIFS

BarrierFluid-applied air and water-resistive barrier

Base of wallDrainage track, clearance above grade and snow line

ReinforcementMesh-reinforced base coat, control joints at movement

FinishIntegrally coloured acrylic or cementitious

What goes wrong

Missing flashingWater enters at heads and sills with no path out

No grade clearanceWall runs into soil or sits under snow load all winter

Omitted jointsStructure moves, finish cracks along the line of movement

Sealant as barrierRelied on as primary rather than secondary defence

Rushed cureMap cracking across an otherwise sound wall

Other Services

Venetian & Decorative

Historic Restoration

Drywall Finishing

Tell us what the wall is doing

Send a photo and a rough scope and we will come back with an honest assessment and a free quote.

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