WIKI: Exterior Insulation Finish Systems ("EIFS") are a type of building product that provides exterior walls with a finished surface, insulation and waterproofing in an integrated composite system. EIFS is also known as "synthetic stucco" and "Senergy", "Finestone", "Dryvit" or "Sto" - popular EIFS brands. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exterior_Insulation_Finishing_System

 

KINGFISH: The outward expression of creeping suburbia and the exterior material of choice for run amok development and quickie facelifts. Progressive Zoning Ordinances limit its use. Then there are the rest.

 

POST YOUR HORRIBLE EIFS SHOTS HERE!

 

I'll eventually drag a few out of my archives. But to get you started, a humdinger from Rob:

 

 

 

Oh, the horror!

Oxford

Ah! :0

Damn, keep that sh!t inside of Disney World.

when you have to take that down what happens -- anyone know? can it be reused or broken down? does it melt it's toxic mix into the ground water table? or will it lie safely in the ground forever at the dump....if not forever at least as long as hot dogs?

does anyone know what the building material that sounds like "ee-fas" phonetically is? I think I heard this correctly, and tried different spelling, but cannot find anything. I think whatever it is, it is not sound good. thanks

EIFS - Exterior Insulation Finishing System.

 

It's often applied to masonry buildings, really trashing the character of historic ones. It has a stucco-like texture.

 

This was a pretty respectable-looking late-1800s brick building before the Odd Fellows made it look, well, odd.

 

 

It looks especially wonderful after a few years, when it's been a chipped off and busted up along the bottom and on the corners by hand trucks, carts, etc.

oh no.

does anyone know what the building material that sounds like "ee-fas" phonetically is? I think I heard this correctly, and tried different spelling, but cannot find anything. I think whatever it is, it is not sound good. thanks

 

EIFS is the devil in sheet form.

EIFS - Exterior Insulation Finishing System.

 

It's often applied to masonry buildings, really trashing the character of historic ones. It has a stucco-like texture.

 

This was a pretty respectable-looking late-1800s brick building before the Odd Fellows made it look, well, odd.

 

 

It looks especially wonderful after a few years, when it's been a chipped off and busted up along the bottom and on the corners by hand trucks, carts, etc.

 

IOOF's will always have a special place in my heart. Why, I don't know.

 

 

 

What the hell is that?  Shouldn't that be at Easton? lol

 

EIFS - Exterior Insulation Finishing System.

if someone wanted to build something made of this, where you had to look at it every day, what would you do? Are there more attractive alternatives that will meet the needs of the customer who is trying to obviously keep cost low?

^Check your local zoning ordinance. There may be a restriction on its use. More attractive options include face brick and siding, but then it all depends on the surrounding architecture and the structure's use. In a residential environment, it can stand in for stucco. On commercial structures it's good as a stand in for stone architectural elements such as cornices. Generally, as you see in the case of the Oddfellows hall, when it's used everywhere, you get sort of a wedding cake vibe. I can't say enough bad things about it. I'd like to see it flat out banned for everything other than use as an accent material.

well in my neighborhood zoning is to be changed for the highest bidder. This material is highly"frowned upon" but not forbidden. My concern is, #1 it is ugly, # 2 -doesnt it wear poorly?

I deplore the use of EIFS to deface heritage buildings, but the same has been done with facing brick, too.

 

I have seen EIFS used to good effect to update some unattractive late-60s / early70s facades, especially the white glazed-brick ones. I've seen it used well on  some early-1900s industrial buildings, too. Not that a good historic restoration wouldn't have been better, but when you're talking about a two-block complex of long-neglected four- and five-story buildings, cost becomes a factor.

 

I'm not saying I like it much, but in some cases I've seen, it was better than doing nothing or installing coated-steel siding.

what about the use in New contruction. Why would you?

Yes, EIFS ages poorly. It doesn't "new" very well either. It's all about how the material is used. If you're simulating tudor style stucco and beam or southwestern adobe style, then you should be okay. It all comes down to scale and execution.

 

you would not want adobe or tudor style in the city though, right? or is it just me?

EIFS makes structures look "digital", which is a very bad thing.

you would not want adobe or tudor style in the city though, right? or is it just me?

 

You could also use it in a bauhuas or early modernist. Deco or moderne maybe. From an aesthetic standpoint, I say use it right or don't use it at all. Again: it comes down to what the ordinance--and neighborhood--says.

actually what our neighborhood thinks does not matter when people with more money and political sontation etc come into play. we found that out the hard way. We can keep trying though. One day I would our neighborhood to have some power.what is bauhaus?

Quote from: peabody99 on Today at 08:46:04 PM

 

    actually what our neighborhood thinks does not matter when people with more money and political sontation etc come into play. we found that out the hard way. We can keep trying though. One day I would our neighborhood to have some power.what is bauhaus?

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus

 

By the way, I'll be merging all this EIFS talk with another related thread shortly.

boy that EIFS is butt ugly stuff. I never knew "stucco" had fancy acronym. I hope I won't be adding pics. Although that Bauhaus building is kind of interesting

Here's an interesting article from the website of the trade group representing the EIFS industry. This article gives a tacit acquittal to EIFS by indicting facebrick, but EIFS, poorly installed, can yield equally nasty results.

 

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Special Interests: Questions About Value

 

The design issues regarding the transmission of vapor through wall envelopes continue to plague home builders regardless of the cladding used, and further bolster the argument that there is no alternative to sound construction practices. Builders who fail to grasp this lesson could face the same fate as Zaring Homes of Cincinnati, Ohio.

 

Given that the wall assembly described below utilizes a weather barrier in a conventional configuration behind the brick cladding, should the EIFS industry now question the recent focus on secondary weather barriers and their relevance to EIFS applications?

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Mold & Moisture Bankrupt Big Builder

 

How quickly after a new home is built can the walls develop serious mold problems? In the case of Cincinnati builder Zaring Homes, the answer was ten weeks. Zaring Homes was building over 1,500 homes a year during the mid-1990s, with annual profits of over $6 million, and when dozens of its new homes became moldy in 1999, the company committed itself to fixing the problems. But the remedies soon became so expensive that the liabilities drove the company to bankruptcy.

 

Standing water. The first residents began moving into one of Zaring's new-home developments, Parkside, in Mason, Ohio, in May 1999. "In late July, the homeowners complained of wet carpet," says Gregg Nicholls, chief building official in Mason. "They saw mold on the subfloor. In August, holes were cut in the drywall to inspect the framing, and there was a quarter inch of standing water in the bottom of the stud cavities." Since Ohio was suffering a drought that summer, the amount of water was surprising. "We were able to wring water out of the fiberglass insulation," said Stephen Vamosi, a consulting architect at Intertech Design in Cincinnati.

 

Water accumulated in the exterior walls of dozens of new homes constructed by Cincinnati builder Zaring Homes. The brick veneer on many of the homes was removed as part of the investigation to determine the source of the moisture.

 

It soon became apparent that dozens of homes had similarly wet exterior walls. Consultants hired by the homeowners blamed poor detailing of the brick veneer. "We believe that wind-driven rain is the source of the moisture," says Timothy Sullivan, an attorney at Taft, Stettinius and Hollister, the Cincinnati firm representing many of the homeowners who are suing Zaring. "The brick is either installed flat against the sheathing, or the air space is filled with mortar."

 

But consultants hired by Zaring Homes and its insurance company concluded that the source of the water was exterior vapor, which entered the walls through permeable sheathing and condensed on the back of the polyethylene under the drywall. "Every one of the affected houses had air conditioning," says Vamosi.

 

Expensive repairs. Whatever the source of the moisture, the results were devastating for Zaring Homes. "Zaring did an incredible amount of remediation on a lot of homes," says Nicholls. "They stripped off the brick and the sheathing, so that the studs were open to the exterior. They pulled out all the insulation, put a mold-protective Kilz paint on the inside of the stud cavities, and rebuilt the walls." After the value of Zaring stock plummeted, all of the assets of the company were sold to Drees Company in January 2001, before remediation work was complete. "Zaring Homes went out of business because they have a $20 to 50 million liability here," says Joe Lstiburek, one of the consultants involved. "Hundreds of homes are potentially involved. To fix the problems would probably cost $60,000 to $70,000 per home."

 

The Zaring story shows how small decisions can have enormous consequences for a builder. Early on in the moisture investigation, Vamosi gave some advice to Allen Zaring, the founder of Zaring Homes. "I told him, 'If you add another inch and a half of insulation to the walls, you will avoid the dew-point conditions,'" recalls Vamosi. "Zaring answered, 'I can't do that because it costs too much. No one else is doing that.' But look what happened to Zaring."

 

http://www.eima.com/specialinterests/questionsaboutvalue/

 

 

Wait, people EIFS their homes? 

 

Dang, all the new houses up here in the Saginaw use hand applied stucco if they are going for that look. 

 

EIFS people claim you can't tell the difference, but as I was biking past some five year old mcmansions today the stucco was aging nicely as well as the precast concrete lintels and arches that dare I say it looked much more established and "old"  In contrast, a 14 year old walgreens rocked EIFS that was pealing, had an ugly peach color and too false of a texture.

 

 

I'm so glad I work for an architecture firm that destroys EIFS on every attempt we can.  That oddfellows building above would make my boss pass out from such a horrible site.

 

I got the honors of smashing a window infill panel on a school we were restoring during demo stages where all the 80's modern crap was being removed.  There were also these windows that had false blinds.  That's right, stickers applied to the glass.  I couldn't touch those though because the windows were donated and were in pretty good condition.

 

 

I guess I'll step on the dark side for a moment and say that dryvit does manufacture some products that are decent when used in an appropriate way.  The cornicework looks reasonable on this building.  Although I'm not fond of the rest of it.  I'd take that say over a blank scar from 60's cornice removal on a historic building.

 

http://www.dryvit.com/fileshare/doc/photog/belmont_university_lg.jpg

 

http://www.dryvit.com/fileshare/doc/photog/belmont_university_lg.jpg

 

There were also these windows that had false blinds.  That's right, stickers applied to the glass.

 

Actually, window film like that is quite common....and an application like that in a school was probably added in case the window was smashed by vandals to minimize breakage material or if it was floor to ceiling, to keep people from walking through it.  Look closely at most "frosted" glass, a lot of times it's a film sticker...I've seen it in stores, airports...etc.

 

EIFS is horrible, I completely agree that it fools no one even from far away and looks terrible once it gets dinged up.

Friends, we are living in the age of litigation. Everybody knows that. The presumption that a particular siding is bound to fail simply because of stigma is ludicrous. Ignorance in the marketplace, especially concerning EIFS, has had an adverse effect on our bottom line. Remember, one bad apple doesn't spoil the whole bunch.

 

In todays reality, with the cost of energy rising everyday I would much rather have EIFS then any other siding under the sun. The truth is there is no other siding that even comes close to the energy efficiency of EIFS. Not brick, vinyl, hardcoat, nothing. Well, maybe one siding can stand up to EIFS' r-value. Cow dung.

 

It seems everywhere on the net there are folks bad mouthing EIFS when they have no clue of what it is they are talking about. From the beginning EIFS installations in this country were flawed due to fundamental mis-steps in the construction process. It is for that reason among others that insurance companies are in business. They are profiting off of ignorance.

We are a nation of sheep, and people will be lead one way or the other, that is clearly evident from the post here, but I think industry professionals are doing a disservice to the industry and the buying public by spewing unfounded rhetoric. It appears the alarmists out there that warn against the evils of EIFS, namely brick and vinyl contractors as well as home inspectors, are failing to convince the buying public and to a greater extent architects and engineers to believe their increasingly piercing and scientifically unfounded rhetoric, so they blab on the net. EIFS is still going up everywhere and it is here to stay.

 

EIFS is not a problem and it hasn't been for some time. How many EIFS clad commercial buildings have moisture related issues? Not many. As I mentioned before EIFS is the way of the future and folks need to start recognizing that fact. We need to have the same quality control apparatus we have in place on commercial projects and implement those principles in the residential construction market. Only then can we as a whole better serve our clients.

<insert picture of Las Vegas Strip here>

Welcome robsantana. We look forward to your views on the host of other issues important to the readers of UO.

 

 

wait a minute. B/c I think it is ugly, I am am ignorant?

 

While I agree we are a nation of sheep, but I do not think sheep even think much about EIFS. In fact, I think sheep- like populations would be drawn to EIFS more so than other herd animals. Really tacky sheep btw.

One giant EIFS basket

 

 

 

 

^That's the first good example of EIFS I've ever seen.