Why home sidings can't take the damp
by Drew DeSilver Seattle Times business
reporter
The news last month that Weyerhaeuser had agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit involving its siding was the worst kind of deja vu.
Thousands of homeowners across the Northwest had been dealing for years with similar faulty siding from Louisiana-Pacific. Made from wood chips glued and pressed together, the siding had tendency to swell, buckle and rot when it came into regular contact with water.
Careful homebuyers such as Royce and Maura Roberts of Kirkland tried to avoid such problems.
"When we bought our house, we asked specifically about L-P, and they told us, 'Don't worry - this is Weyerhaeuser,' " Maura Roberts said.
The Robertses wish they knew then what they know now. As Weyerhaeuser's announcement that it was setting aside $82 million to settle siding claims made clear, the problems with so-called "composite wood" siding go far beyond one or two companies.
In fact, over the past five years, every major North American maker of composite wood siding - hardboard and its cousin, oriented strand board, or OSB - has been sued by homeowners who claim the products are defective. Seven companies, including Weyerhaeuser and L-P, have settled class-action suits for millions of dollars. At the same time, many homeowners with L-P siding have criticized their individual payments as grossly inadequate.
Amid all the legal wrangling, one question has never been answered definitively by a court: Why does composite siding fail?
Interviews with wood scientists, construction experts and others suggest a range of factors, from the design of the house to the quality of the installation. But, the experts say, there's little doubt that composite siding is far more sensitive to moisture than natural wood, and things that cedar siding would slough off - a nail driven a fraction of an inch too deep, a less-than-perfect paint job - can be fatal to hardboard and OSB.
"If it gets wet, it's going to swell," said Joseph Loferski, wood science professor at Virginia Tech. "And if it stays wet, decay organisms are going to want to eat it."
Cedar isn't what it used to be
For decades, the siding material of choice in the Pacific Northwest was Western red cedar - specifically, heartwood from massive old-growth cedar trees.
As cedar grows, Loferski said, chemicals that are toxic to fungi and other decay-causing organisms are pushed toward the center of the tree - the heartwood. Siding cut from that wood resists decay very well. Even today, you can see inch-thick cedar siding on old Seattle homes that has barely been affected by the elements.
But today, old-growth cedar is nearly impossible to get. Most of the vast forests that covered the region 150 years ago have been cut down; nearly all that remains is protected. As early as the 1950s, manufacturers began looking for siding substitutes, and hardboard quickly became a top choice.
Hardboard is wood, sort of: It's made from small bundles of wood fiber, bound together with resins and wax and compressed under high heat and pressure. It was invented in 1924 by William Mason; Masonite, the company he founded, remains the nation's largest hardboard maker.
Builders liked hardboard because it looked like solid wood but cost much less; manufacturers liked it because it could be made from smaller, fast-growing softwoods such as pine and spruce, and it gave them a use for the scraps left after cutting lumber.
Masonite hardboard originally was used for such things as clipboards, furniture and interior paneling. Once Masonite's original patents expired, other companies began experimenting with their own hardboards. Weyerhaeuser developed its first hardboard siding in 1963, said Phil Hardwicke, Weyerhaeuser's product performance manager.
At first, hardboard siding had trouble gaining a foothold in the residential housing market. Paul Fisette, director of the building and wood technology program at the University of Massachusetts, said that when he owned a construction company 30 years ago, it was used mostly on low-priced homes. Expectations were low, Fisette said, and few people complained when it fell apart in the rain.
"I think there was an attitude about it that was like, `Oh, it's that crap,' " he said.
Al DeBonis, head of Wood Advisory Services in Millbrook, N.Y., and a hired expert for the plaintiffs in the Weyerhaeuser and Masonite class actions, agreed.
"It was cheap, and people knew that," DeBonis said. "They expected it to fall apart."
Over time, as the process improved and solid wood siding became more expensive, hardboard captured a large share of the siding market in some areas (South Florida, notably). However, its niche remained relatively small in the Northwest until recently. The big success story in composite-wood siding in this area was Louisiana-Pacific's oriented strand board (OSB).
The Portland-based company developed OSB in the mid-1970s, originally as a plywood substitute. OSB is made from thin strands of wood, predominantly aspen. The strands are aligned into an artificial grain and pressed into a thin layer; several layers are bound together to form the board. Like hardboard, OSB is held together by resins and waxes; unlike hardboard, OSB is engineered to be as stiff and strong as plywood.
After successfully launching OSB as wall sheathing, L-P introduced its Inner-Seal OSB siding in 1985. The product was wildly popular: L-P estimates that Inner-Seal was installed on 700,000 to 800,000 homes nationwide before being pulled from the market.
Vulnerable to rain, humidity
Reports that hardboard and OSB siding were prone to warp, buckle and rot in wet weather popped up in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but few paid attention until 1992. That year, the federal government concluded that Masonite's hardboard siding was prone to fail in Florida's humid climate and moved to deny federal mortgage insurance to developments that used it.
The reports of failing siding - usually Masonite, the biggest maker of hardboard, and L-P, the biggest maker of OSB - started to come in quickly after that: a 380-home development in West Palm Beach, Fla.; thousands of homes in Texas; thousands more in Oregon and Washington.
The lawsuits followed in short order. Although the manufacturers maintained, then and now, that most of the problems were due to faulty installation or maintenance, one by one they settled nationwide class-action suits: L-P in 1996, Masonite and Georgia-Pacific in 1998, Smurfit-Stone and Masonite again in 1999; ABTco in May; and, finally, Weyerhaeuser last month.
The fundamental issue, experts agree, is that water affects hardboard and OSB more critically than it affects natural wood.
All wood and wood products absorb water. The wood fibers expand when they get wet and contract when they dry. That stresses whatever is binding the fibers together.
If the natural bonds are still present, as in solid wood or plywood, the product will shrink to its original size when it dries. But if those bonds have been broken, the product weakens - and gets weaker the longer it's wet.
Because hardboard and OSB are made from wood chips, many of the wood's natural bonds are broken.
"You're building in these internal stresses, and the product wants to go back to its original size," DeBonis said. "When it absorbs moisture, either in liquid form or from the air, it wants to swell back up. Composite never goes back to its pressed size. Over time, it will get bigger and bigger - what we call `residual thickness swell.' "
A 1997 study of five commercial OSB products at varying humidity levels found consistently that the more moisture they absorbed from the air, the more they swelled and the weaker they got.
"Due to nonrecoverable thickness swelling, a significant portion of the loss will not be recovered when the products are redried to the dry state," the authors wrote in the journal Wood and Fiber Science. "These permanent-stiffness and strength losses will subsequently affect the performance of the products during service."
Swelling can cause siding panels to buckle and warp. It also can cause the panels' protective paint coating to crack, which allows more moisture to penetrate and more damage to occur. And if moisture gets behind the siding panels, Virginia Tech's Loferski said, it will never dry out completely.
Wet wood, in turn, is a feast for bacteria, fungi and other decay organisms. Unlike old-growth cedar, hardboard and OSB have no natural resistance to such organisms, which can turn a solid board into something the consistency of soggy bread.
"Wood only gives you trouble if it's wet more often than it's dry," Fisette said.
That helps explain why so many of the complaints about composite siding have come from the Northwest and the Southeast, places where it's rainy, humid or both for most of the year - "severe environments for any wood product," DeBonis said.
Both regions were home to large numbers of hardboard and OSB plants, so it's reasonable that more of the products would be sold there than elsewhere. Between 1980 and 1998, Weyerhaeuser said, California, Oregon and Washington accounted for 52 percent of its hardboard siding sales.
Another factor, Loferski said, is that new houses may lack gutters, rain spouts and wide overhangs, which help keep water off the walls of many older houses.
Installation needs unrealistic
A product so sensitive requires proper installation, manufacturers say. Their manuals are full of instructions about how to protect the siding from unwanted moisture:
Manufacturers say most complaints about rotting or peeling siding can be traced to builders' failure to follow instructions.
"Our experience is that a very, very large percentage (of siding failures) have something to do with installation or maintenance," Weyerhaeuser's Hardwicke said.
Many of the siding settlements recognize the role of improper installation. The Weyerhaeuser settlement, for example, lists 13 instances of faulty installation or upkeep that would keep a homeowner from getting compensation.
But, construction experts say, such elaborate installation rules ignore the realities of how houses are built nowadays. Siding is nailed up with a gun, which can easily drive nails below the surface of the board. Paint is applied with a sprayer, and few workers stoop to shoot paint up onto the drip edges of the siding.
"In my opinion, no builder is going to go out and do every single thing that's required," Fisette said. "If you get a builder who does 75 percent of what he's supposed to do, that's pretty good."
Bruce MacKintosh, a Woodinville home inspector who inspects 300 to 350 houses a year, said he's never seen one where the siding was installed exactly according to the manufacturer's specifications.
"Let's be honest: You're lucky to get more than a heavy mist (of paint) from the builder," MacKintosh said. "But (manufacturers) want to sell the product, and if they make it sound like it's too hard to install, it's not going to sell."
The siding situation has attracted attention from investigators in several states, including Washington. In 1996, L-P agreed to pay $1.3 million to settle a case brought by the Washington Attorney General's office over Inner-Seal.
Douglas Walsh, an assistant attorney general in the office's consumer-protection division, said the office continues to investigate other siding manufacturers, although he declined to mention any by name.
"You just can't throw the product out there and say, `It performs well if it's installed right,' when you know it's not going to be installed right," Walsh said. "It's not responsible any way you look at it."
Washington isn't alone. For two years, Wisconsin has been investigating whether composite siding makers misrepresented their products' durability and ease of installation.
Bill Oemichen, Wisconsin's consumer-protection chief, declined to discuss the probe, other than to say, "We have discovered facts that make us have greater concerns about some manufacturers than others."
HUD still on the fence
Another concern, Walsh said, is whether composite siding is tested adequately before being sent to market. Most siding is designed to conform to standards set by industry organizations such as APA-The Engineered Wood Association, but some question whether laboratory tests used to gain such certification reflect the real world.
"We think that lab testing doesn't get to the core issue: How does it perform (in places) where you have constant exposure to rain and wind?" Walsh said. "Given Washington's challenging climate, these things need to be tested to make sure they'll work here before being marketed here."
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) also is considering new testing rules for composite siding. Before proposing any rules, however, department officials have asked the federal Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wis., to study how well industry standards predict performance.
Two years ago, the lab nailed 13 different hardboards to a test fence. The boards have been sprayed for an hour each day, research physicist Anton TenWolde said, and are exposed to the hot, humid summers and cold, snowy winters of Wisconsin.
When the boards are taken off this fall, TenWolde said, researchers will measure how much they've deformed and compare that with what the industry tests predicted.
Weyerhaeuser maintains that the vast majority of its siding is sound. Of the more than 3 billion square feet produced since 1963, Hardwicke said, less than 2 percent has been the subject of customer complaints. The $82 million that's been set aside should be enough to pay all claims, administrative costs and up to $26.4 million in attorney fees, he said.
Weyerhaeuser no longer makes hardboard siding, having sold the business in 1996. However, it continues to market the siding made by Collins Products, which owns Weyerhaeuser's Klamath Falls plant.
"The product's been around a long time and has a pretty good track record," Hardwicke said. "And we've had the benefit of looking at L-P's experience."
That experience indicates that initial estimates can be wildly off.
When L-P agreed to settle the class action in 1996, it expected to pay no more than $275 million. The company has paid out $502 million to settle 135,000 claims against Inner-Seal, said Denny Kopfmann, L-P's director of product support.
Some 16,000 claims have yet to be paid, Kopfmann said, and "a couple hundred" new ones are coming in every week. L-P is scheduled to pay another $6 million into its settlement fund before the deal's expiration in December 2003 - nowhere near enough to cover all the outstanding claims.
After 2003, Kopfmann said, L-P will decide whether to pay remaining claimants. If it does, half will be paid in 2004 and half in 2005. If it doesn't, homeowners could launch a new class-action suit.
L-P quit selling Inner-Seal in 1995 but came back into the siding market just over a year later with SmartSystem. SmartSystem is an OSB product, like Inner-Seal, but it contains more and different resins for stronger binding and moisture resistance, as well as a new edge coating intended to eliminate moisture wicking. The new product also is treated with zinc borate to resist fungi and insects.
The company also is making a greater effort to educate builders about how to install SmartSystem, Kopfmann said.
"I think we've learned from the Inner-Seal experience how important it is to look at how the product is performing in the field," he said. "We have to do a better job as manufacturers at reaching out to contractors so that this is installed properly."
So far, Kopfmann said, more than 400,000 homes have been built with SmartSystem siding or other products in the SmartSystem line. As of May 1, he said, L-P has received only 160 warranty claims.
Fisette is cautiously optimistic about the new generation of composite wood siding.
"People are learning how to work with it, and manufacturers are becoming more realistic with their installation requirements," he said.
Meanwhile, home inspector MacKintosh has another worry: synthetic stucco, a common alternative to wood-based siding. The polystyrene-based cladding doesn't absorb water, but it can trap moisture inside walls. That can cause the sheathing and studs - the elements that make the wall a wall - to rot away.
One class-action lawsuit involving synthetic stucco, in North Carolina, has been settled, and Mac Kintosh said it's only a matter of time before stucco achieves the notoriety of composite siding.
"By the time the litigation is done," he predicted, "it's going to make L-P look like nothing."
Drew DeSilver's phone message number is 206-464-3145.
Faulty siding a headache for homeowners and buyers
by Drew DeSilver Seattle Times business
reporter
The 36 new homes in the Regatta Estates subdivision of Edmonds seemed ideal: nestled next to the South Gulch open space, a half-mile from Picnic Point beach, in a friendly neighborhood full of children. And best of all, affordable.
"To get in under $200,000 was almost unheard of," said Jeanne McDonald. She and her husband, Mark, bought their house in October 1996 and moved in the following January.
One reason the homes were within the McDonalds' means was that they were sided not with pricey solid cedar or even plywood, but with Weyerhaeuser-brand hardboard siding.
"The flyers for the houses in the subdivision trumpeted the fact that it had Weyerhaeuser, which was a selling point then because of the (Louisiana-Pacific) issue," Jeanne McDonald said. "We thought,`OK, no issues with Weyerhaeuser.' "
The McDonalds, and many of their neighbors, have issues now.
On some houses, the siding has started taking on a wavy, wet-cardboard appearance. On others, it is visibly pulling away from the side of the house. One house has a huge, blotchy stain of mildew on its northeast side. On another, part of the siding above the back door bulges out.
For the past few years, several Regatta Estates residents have gone back and forth between developer Crosby Homes and Collins Products, the Portland company that bought Weyerhaeuser's hardboard-siding business in 1996, over who was responsible for the condition of their siding.
At one point, Collins told Kevin and Rose McKay (whose house has the bulging siding) that repair work would begin by late June. But nothing has been done, Kevin McKay said, and at this point, he just wants the hardboard off his house.
"I'm of the opinion that this hardboard is not a viable siding in Western Washington," he said. "It's going to fail over and over. It seems to me that what you do is take it all off and put something else up."
The Regatta Estates residents' experiences will be familiar to the thousands of Northwest homeowners who've had to deal with warping or rotting L-P siding over the past several years.
It's too soon to say whether Weyerhaeuser siding will acquire a similar reputation. Complaints about the siding didn't start to achieve wide currency until last year. Weyerhaeuser settled a class-action lawsuit over the siding last month.
The Federal Way-based company claims there's nothing inherently wrong with the siding. Most problems, it says, are due to improper installation or maintenance.
Siding and salability of homes
Local real-estate agents say L-P's history has made siding a frequent concern of potential homebuyers, especially in the Eastside and northern suburbs, where many new homes have been built in the past few decades. (Older homes, built when old-growth cedar was more plentiful, are more likely to have solid wood siding.)
"Some people just don't want to deal with it," said Holly Magowan, an agent with Re/MAX Northwest Realtors in Seattle. "They'll say, `Don't show me anything with L-P siding - I only want to look at cedar or stucco.' "
Other people will buy a house with problematic siding, agents say - so long as there are no other major problems with the house and the buyer is compensated for his troubles.
Patrick Inouye liked the two-story, three-bedroom house in Seattle's Magnolia neighborhood, but his enthusiasm dimmed when the building inspector found that much of the house's L-P siding had swollen beyond specifications - from 60 percent to 90 percent, depending on the wall.
"It cooled my jets a little bit, at least initially," said Inouye, a Seattle lawyer.
But Inouye still liked the house, and when the owners agreed to knock $15,000 off their asking price, he agreed to buy it. The deal closed three months ago; Inouye plans to have the entire house re-sided with cedar and repainted.
Even though the job will cost him around $23,000, he said, he's not upset.
"It's Magnolia, and that offsets a lot of the feelings I had about having to get the siding replaced," he said. "I'm doing a number of things to upgrade the place, so I'm accepting it as just another thing I'm doing to bring it up to the way I want it."
Problems not always disclosed
Home sellers have a general duty under state law to disclose all material defects they know about, said Terry Miller, an agent at Coldwell Banker Bain Associates in Seattle.
The standard disclosure form doesn't ask specifically about siding, but several realty firms do; Miller's firm, for example, asks whether the home has manufactured siding, whether a product-liability claim has been made, and whether the homeowner received any payment.
No such disclosures were made, however, on the Camano Island house that Marilyn Hawkins and her partner were considering as a "getaway" home. They had already made an offer on the house, Hawkins said, and were reviewing the inspector's report when he mentioned, "By the way, did you know you have L-P siding?"
Further inspection revealed that much of the siding was loose or warping, said Hawkins, who owns a public-relations firm.
"Did it need to be replaced right then? No, but it would have to be eventually," she said. "We were buying a liability."
After a couple of weeks of negotiating, the sellers agreed to drop the home's price by $10,000. Even though the re-siding job ended up costing closer to $20,000, Hawkins said, she and her partner have no regrets.
"We actually walked away from the deal at least twice," she said. "We're happy with it now, but boy, there were times when we said to ourselves, is it worth it?"
Drew DeSilver's phone message number is 206-464-3145.
Siding claim information
For general information, check the Web site of the Defective Hardboard Siding Information
Center: http://www.4w.com/siding/index.htm
. For more specific information, check with each siding manufacturer.
ABTco (hardboard siding)
Louisiana-Pacific (Inner-Seal-brand OSB siding)
Masonite (hardboard siding)
Masonite: (OmniWood-brand OSB siding)
Smurfit-Stone Container (Cladwood-brand hardboard siding)
Weyerhaeuser (hardboard siding)
Georgia Pacific: The settlement period has expired, and claims can no longer be filed.
Ask the Expert / Darrell Hay
The good, the bad and the ugly of synthetic stucco
Q: I've been hearing about problems with EIFS stucco and would like more information.
A: EIFS (pronounced eefs) stands for Exterior Insulation and Finish System, sometimes referred to as synthetic stucco. EIFS refers generically to systems manufactured by Dryvit, Sto, Parex, Senergy, Stuco-O-Flex, Pleko and others. EIFS is composed of polyisocyanurate or expanded polystyrene (EPS - "foam" sheets), reinforcing mesh, and a basecoat, covered with an acrylic finish.
While EIFS can look very similar to traditional cement-based stucco, they are totally different materials.
Q: What are the differences, advantages, disadvantages?
A: Traditional stucco is brittle, requiring expansion joints on the surface, while EIFS is not, and does not require visible joints. Traditional stucco may crack and/or become permanently stained, requiring painting; EIFS does not generally crack. The EIFS acrylic facing materials are flexible, allow only minute amounts of moisture to pass and are colorfast.
EIFS comes in unlimited colors and textures, and is adaptable for a variety of architectural styles and trim effects simply by carving and gluing a piece of foam over a window or door (using traditional stucco, this would require complex wood framing, difficult with some shapes). The foam adds a layer of insulation to the exterior of the wall, decreasing energy usage and making the building quieter. And to boot, it's cheaper than traditional stucco in many areas.
Q: Sounds great. Why all the fuss?
A: We could spend all day on this, but the long and short of it is leaky buildings and rotten walls.
The EIFS industry is in its darkest hour. A great stigma has befallen this material in the construction and real-estate industries, led by large numbers of failures, faulty installations, costly repairs and lawsuits across the wetter parts of the U.S. and Canada, including the Puget Sound area.
Bruce MacKintosh, owner of Centennial Home Inspections in Woodinville, calls EIFS "the rich man's LP" (referring to Louisiana Pacific's troubled "Inner Seal" siding). Mark Fowler, with Northwest Wall and Ceiling Bureau, a Seattle-based international construction trade association, concedes that one of the biggest problems facing EIFS contractors today is renewals on their insurance.
Q: So is EIFS to blame?
A: Blame can be spread a lot of directions, and fingers are getting worn out pointing everywhere simultaneously.
Plaintiff attorneys blame EIFS manufacturers, who point to window manufacturers, who point to builders, who point to installers, who point at homeowners (lack of maintenance!), who point to architects, who point to insurance companies, who then point back at the EIFS companies. It's a circular blame game, and everyone has some culpability.
Siding failures and leakage can and do occur with any type of siding. All types of siding leak or absorb some amounts of moisture unless covered by huge roof overhangs. However, with EIFS, water damage can be exacerbated, as it does not allow water to evaporate back out of the building shell like other types of siding.
Before fall 1996, EIFS insulating board was glued or nailed directly onto the wall of the building, lacking any secondary waterproofing whatsoever (this was legal and not inspected by the building department or anyone else). The idea was that the acrylic waterproof covering and caulking would protect the walls. Many shortcuts were performed during installation, flashing was missed, caulking failed and windows leaked (up to 40 percent of all windows leak to some degree).
Add new tighter interior-wall regulations in the early 1990s (eliminating evaporation to the interior) and a building boom with inexperienced installers, and you had a disaster of unimaginable proportions.
Q: So what happened?
A: After huge numbers of costly repairs in Wilmington, N.C., spreading quickly to other areas in the middle '90s, national builders, the EIFS industry and code organizations got together to assess the problems, and come up with solutions and requirements in the previously unregulated industry.
They found that the previous method, a "barrier system," was not working because it did not always keep water out. The requirement was to add a "drainage system" behind all EIFS installations to drain incidental leakage; these proprietary systems becoming the responsibility of the manufacturer to implement and enforce among installers.
Q: Do the new systems work?
A: The jury is still out.
The advantages of flexible acrylic facing cannot be denied, and to avoid the EIFS stigma, many builders are putting EIFS-derived acrylic top finishes over conventional stucco bases (which drain naturally rather than hold moisture, as does EPS) and foam trim pieces. So far, the returns on these installations have been good, and the good look of the EIFS topcoat and flexibility remains, with a conventional time-tested cement base.
Next week: What to do if you have EIFS on your home, and what the future holds.
Darrell Hay answers readers' questions. Call 206-464-8514 to record your question. Or e-mail dhay@seattletimes.com.
Ups and downs of siding choices
As common as engineered-wood siding is, it's hardly the only cladding choice. Northwest
homeowners have several options for siding their homes. None, however, is perfect. A
rundown:
Fiber-cement (such as HardiPlank)
Old-growth cedar
New cedar
Plywood
Plastic (such as vinyl or polyvinyl chloride)
Ask the Expert / Darrell Hay
What to do when your home has EIFS siding
Last week, I outlined some of the problems with Exterior Insulation and Finish System (EIFS - synthetic stucco).
This week: where the industry is headed, and what to do if you have this material on your home.
Paraphrasing industry insiders, "no matter how bad we may have screwed it up in the past, it's not going to go away." Acrylic finishes over traditional stucco and true EIFS installations just have too many advantages for EIFS to disappear completely, despite the tremendous negative publicity.
Stuc-O-Flex, headquartered in Redmond, now offers nine EIFS drainage-system packages for new installations.
Greg DeVault, a private Seattle building inspector, has done many EIFS inspections. Despite best intentions of the installers, he sees only one out of 10 buildings meeting manufacturer-recommended installation instructions. "Every EIFS product must be installed according to manufacturer specifications, if not, it is a code violation," DeVault says. DeVault adds that drainage systems must be installed perfectly, or else you're doomed.
Q: So who's enforcing this?
A: No one at the moment. Mark Fowler with the Northwest Wall and Ceiling Bureau (NWCB) tells me that the cities of Sammamish and Bellevue have begun working with the NWCB to implement specific programs and third-party or municipal inspections of EIFS.
The problem with these inspections is illustrated perfectly by Stuc-O-Flex's nine drainage systems: Every manufacturer (there are at least eight major, and scores of smaller, manufacturers) has different products. It is demanding enough to identify the manufacturer simply by looking at a product, much less evaluate a completely covered drainage system at a reasonable cost and in a reasonable time frame.
Q: Last week you mentioned a traditional cement stucco base with an EIFS-derived acrylic top coat, lacking the insulating foam beneath. A hybrid-type system. What can we expect?
A: The sales have been strong; the results have been mixed, but getting much better. Another newer technology in drainage systems is the liquid-applied rubber coating sprayed directly on plywood, providing moisture resistance for EIFS or other siding material. This shows promise, but skeptics abound.
Q: How can I tell if I have EIFS on my building?
A: Hit it with your knuckle. If it has a hollow sound it is EIFS. If it hurts and bloodies your knuckle, it is stucco beneath. Take a knife and dig into a small portion of the topcoat in an inconspicuous area. If it is scratchy, it is cement-based. If it has a somewhat rubbery texture, it is an acrylic finish.
Q: With EIFS siding, what are some things I could look for?
A: Problems occur where poor EIFS installation techniques interface with openings, such as windows and doors. You will not be able to see rot from the exterior beneath the siding until it is highly advanced. It takes specific moisture analysis equipment and experience to see and predict the problems.
Exposure to rainwater is the single largest predictor of problems. Unpenetrated siding will not leak.
South- and west-facing EIFS (where our rains come from) will be most vulnerable, assuming they have at least one of the following: small or nonexistent roof overhangs, tall walls, parapets, flat roofs, exposed beams or post tops, gutter ends buried inside the siding, windows, deck-rail abutments, swelling or cracking, and doors.
Check for a good seal at windows, particularly wood windows that need to be flashed. Flashing needs to be complete, including "kick-out flashing" at roof and wall intersections. Look for tobacco-colored water stains at the top edges of the foundation. Obviously, water stains on the interior floor or walls are indicators of problems.
If the home was built after 1996, it likely has a drainage system and better flashing than older homes.
The latest techniques in flashing and sealing windows involve expensive and, in my opinion, questionable "peel-and-stick," fancy flashing and over-engineered papering, multiple complicated caulking and other Band-Aids. The window industry needs to step up and supply us with windows that don't leak and have integral flashing.
Finally, this from Gary Shipman, lead attorney on a successful class-action suit against EIFS manufacturers in North Carolina: "The key to having a good understanding of problems with a home is a good inspection by a qualified inspector. Not every `home inspector' understands how to properly inspect an EIFS home. A homeowner should ensure that anyone conducting an inspection has a track record."
And specific training, I might add.
Darrell Hay answers readers' questions. Call 206-464-8514 to record your question. Or e-mail dhay@seattletimes.com. Sorry, no personal replies.