A fair number of Utah County homes, Orem included, are finished in EIFS rather than traditional cement stucco, and from the sidewalk the two can look nearly identical.…
A fair number of Utah County homes, Orem included, are finished in EIFS rather than traditional cement stucco, and from the sidewalk the two can look nearly identical. Underneath they have almost nothing in common. Cement stucco is a heavy mineral plaster built up in coats over lath. EIFS is an exterior insulation system: rigid foam board on the wall, a thin reinforced base coat over it, and a synthetic finish on top. One is hard and dense and rings when you knock it. The other is light, gives slightly under a firm press, and sounds soft and hollow by comparison.
The difference that actually costs money is how each one handles water. Both depend on what is behind them, but some EIFS walls were built as barrier assemblies with no drainage path, meaning any water that gets past a penetration has nowhere to exit and nothing to dry it. Newer synthetic assemblies are typically built to drain. Which one is on your house governs how the wall is investigated, how much material has to come off to reach dry substrate, and what the repair has to accomplish besides making the outside look right again.
Identification is the first job, and it is not something to settle by looking at photographs. A contractor knocks across the wall and listens, presses the surface, and examines an edge where the finish returns into a window or door opening or terminates at the base. Thickness tells a great deal, as does whether the edge shows foam or shows layered cement over lath. Trim details, band boards, and decorative shapes around openings are another tell, because those are simple to shape in foam and laborious to build in cement plaster.
Getting this wrong is expensive in both directions. Cement patch material troweled onto an EIFS wall is a poor marriage that cracks and separates because the two behave differently under temperature and moisture. Mesh and synthetic base coat spread over damaged cement plaster hides the problem without repairing the assembly. Investigation differs too. On a suspected EIFS wall a contractor is looking for moisture trapped in and behind the foam, which means probing at the low points and around penetrations rather than assuming that a dry-looking surface indicates a dry wall behind it.
An EIFS repair follows a different sequence. The damaged finish and base coat come off, and the foam behind them is removed back to material that is genuinely dry, which is often a larger area than the visible damage suggested. Whatever let water in gets corrected at that point: the barrier behind the foam, the flashing where an opening interrupts the wall, or the junction where a roof edge meets a vertical surface. Then the assembly is rebuilt in its own layers, foam, reinforcing mesh, base coat, and finish, and the finish is matched for both texture and aggregate against the existing wall.
Sealant joints deserve particular attention on a synthetic wall, especially one without a drainage path, because in that assembly the joints at openings and penetrations are doing real work rather than serving as backup to something behind them. They are also a maintenance item rather than a permanent detail. Utah County exposure adds to the load, with strong sun on the finish through the summer and repeated freeze-thaw cycling through the winter working on every joint and every crack. On an EIFS home, walking those joints and terminations regularly is the cheapest thing you can do for the wall.
Knock on it. Cement stucco is hard and dense and sounds solid. EIFS is foam under a thin coating, so it sounds hollow and gives a little under firm pressure. Look at an edge where the finish wraps into a window opening, and look at any decorative trim or banding, which is easy to shape in foam and difficult in cement plaster. Have a contractor confirm it before a repair is scoped.
No. The reputation comes from older barrier-style assemblies built with no drainage path, where water that got past a penetration had no way out and no way to dry. Synthetic assemblies built to drain behave differently and handle an incidental leak the way a wall should. Which type is on your house is a diagnostic question, and it is one of the first things a contractor establishes because it changes the entire repair approach.
Not automatically. EIFS is a separate assembly with its own materials, its own layering, and its own investigation methods, and skill with cement plaster does not transfer directly. Ask a contractor plainly whether they work on synthetic stucco, how they confirm which assembly a wall is, and how they check for trapped moisture in the foam. If the answer treats the two as interchangeable, keep looking. Call 801-644-9000 and we will match you accordingly.
Damaged stucco rarely starts at the surface. A repair contractor opens the failed area, finds what wet it, corrects the barrier and flashing behind it, then rebuilds the coats and works out how the new finish will meet the old.
Learn more →Hairline crazing is normal. Stair-step cracks at corners, diagonals running off window and door openings, and horizontal lines at floor level are telling you something. Diagnosis comes first, filler second, because a patched crack that keeps moving comes back.
Learn more →New stucco is built in layers over a weather-resistant barrier and lath, and a re-stucco is your chance to correct what the old assembly got wrong. A recoat changes the face of a wall. It does not fix drainage.
Learn more →Synthetic stucco is a different assembly from cement stucco, foam and thin coatings rather than cement over lath. It fails differently, probes differently, and repairs differently. Guessing which one you have is how money gets spent on the wrong fix.
Learn more →Water almost never comes through the field of a wall. It enters at a window head, a roof-to-wall junction, a deck ledger, or a weep screed buried in soil, then travels behind the stucco until it finds framing to sit against.
Learn more →Get the wall diagnosed before anyone mixes patch material.
Call 801-644-9000A few details about your stucco and your city is all we need to make the connection.