Michael Holigan: If you've been looking at new homes lately, you've probably noticed that stucco has become very, very popular, but it's not really stucco. Mark Sadler here with Dryvit Systems to help us out. Mark, it's not stucco. What is it? Looks like stucco.
Mark Sadler: It does look like stucco and it's probably one of the fastest growing materials in the residential market. It's an acrylic system. It's an insulated wall system, and the industry term is exterior finished system with insulated wall. It actually got a start in the commercial business 26 years ago, and right now it's...in the last 10 years it's been growing in residential markets.
M.H.: Why is that? Why are residential builders picking up on it?
M.S.: For a lot of reasons - cost efficiency, color selection, design flexibility and insulation. Those are some of the most popular reasons why it's chosen.
M.H.: You start out like you said with foam. Now, what is the purpose of the foam backing?
M.S.: The foam backing does a couple things. One obviously is just like your coffee cup in the morning. It's an insulating material. And our system can be anywhere from 3/4 of an inch thick, all the way up to four inches. And, for every inch of foam you get an R value of just over four, so you can imagine the R value you can get, the insulation value for a home. The other beauty of this is, unlike traditional insulation in the home between studs, you've got a lot of thermal transference between those studs. This encapsulates the whole house, so it reduces any thermal transference to the wall.
M.H.: So it's sort of like having an igloo cooler around your home. You still have the fiberglass in the wall, but you've got this on the outside?
M.S.: Exactly.
M.H.: How do they attach the foam to the walls?
M.S.: The foam is typically attached with an adhesive and you actually have a lot of better wind pull off results with an adhesive versus a mechanical fastening.
M.H.: How do you get that smooth? I know when you glue that foam up there that it's all not going to be perfectly level. What do you have to do before you put your base coat and your mesh on?
M.S.: What you do is, it's basically like filing your finger nails. We call it rasping, but they basically rasp the walls to an even plane. So any disformities or unevenness in the wall would rasp to an even plane.
M.H.: Mark after you get the foam up, I noticed you go to a mud layer with a mesh in it. What is that doing?
M.S.: This layer here is providing all the protection from the elements, really the protection from water, your water resistance. And also impact resistance. This mud is basically a combination of cement, and everyone knows what cement is, and acrylics. And those two materials come together and they form this incredible exterior layer. And in that is a woven fiberglass mesh. And when you have that woven in that acrylic semintitious base coat, it gives you a superior protection wall.
M.H.: How much strength does that really add?
M.S.: This house we're looking at today has got a standard mesh, which is about four ounces per square yard in weight. If you've got another home that you've got a lot of kids, maybe a bicycle's out there and you've got some high impact areas concerned, what you'd want to do is use a double layer of mesh. This is a 20 ounce mesh. So, between 20 ounces here and four ounces, you've got an incredibly impact-resistant wall.
M.H.: And after you've put your base coat and your mesh on, then you come back with your color coat and how many selections are there on colors?
M.S.: Basically, it's any color you want. We offer over 400 standard colors that you can choose from. And five different textures. So really, it's whatever the home owner wants, we can basically provide them with. Some people like a sand finish, like this house here. It's a much finer, it's a crisper finish. Some people like a little bit rougher texture. It gives it a little bit more character. So it really is personal preferences.
M.H.: What other advantages are there?
M.S.: This lamina here is a very flexible...
M.H.: Wow.
M.S.: ...surface. So unlike traditional stucco that's very rigid, this basically has a lot of flexibility built into it and it's able to withstand a certain amount of building movement, natural building movement where you won't have any problems with cracking. It's also low maintenance, unlike a home that's painted you have to paint every several years. This is something that you shouldn't really have to deal with anything other than just regular maintenance cleaning every couple of years.
M.H.: How does it compare on pricing it to other type finishes, vinyls, bricks, other types of siding?
M.S.: It's going to be very competitive with the brick exterior. Now where the appeal comes, is the fact that we can do a whole lot with different foam shapes. Like this house here, instead of just having all flat walls, we've got some bands around the windows. It gives it a little bit more of an accent and appeal. When you start doing this, and you can get very creative with foam shapes, that's when we become much more affordable, 'cause if you did that with any other exterior it's rather expensive. You could also with a foam do inset grooves. So you get some definition to the wall.
M.H.: I built a house like that once and it was grooved totally in the front and it looked like a big stone house instead of what it actually was which was this. I think it looks great and, like I said, I've seen builders all across the country really going to it. It makes a nice finish.
M.S.: Yeah. It's been very successful and it's nice because you can turn your house, give it something...a special look as opposed to everything else on the street.
M.H.: Make it yours.
M.S.: Yes.
M.H.: Okay. Thanks Mark.
M.S.: Thank you Michael.
Episode 011 1995 - 96 Season
| Vinyl Siding | Finding Studs | Stucco | Installing Storm Windows | Flooring (design) | One Time Close Mortgage | LIST |
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