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ARCHITECTURAL CONSULTANT America's EIFS* Expert - OUR 30TH YEAR Product
Development and Market Development Services, EIFS*, Stucco,
Syntentic Stucco, Wall Systems, Windows, *Exterior Insulation & Finish Systems (also known as "Dryvit®"** and "synthetic stucco".)
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ASKED QUESTIONS -------------------------------------------------- EIFS MINI-FACT OF THE DAY: DID YOU KNOW?..... EIFS is a "Green"
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(eco-friendly)?
Robert Thomas is a technical and marketing consultant. He has 30+ years experience and specializes in exterior wall systems, such as:
30+ years of experience with EIFS, and wall/roof systems:
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EIFS ("Exterior Insulation and Finish Systems", aka "synthetic stucco") is an exterior building wall product and is a system of materials. EIFS provides insulation, weatherproofing and a finished surface in a single integrated product. There are various types of EIFS and several ways of installing it, but EIFS is usually applied onto the outside face of exterior building walls, in a series of steps, by professional plasterers, using hand tools. The installation steps are:
There are several types of EIFS, including the traditional barrier type, and the newer EIFS with Drainage type. The above description is of the simplest type - a barrier EIFS. There are also a number of wall claddings that are not EIFS but that look a lot like EIFS (and vice versa), such as: Many colors and surface textures are available with EIFS. EIFS can also be made into carved or contoured "shapes", which give a wall a decorative effect and "shape". EIFS does not support the building, but rather is a cladding, like brick or siding. EIFS is very lightweight, has excellent insulation characteristics, and is moderately priced. EIFS can be used on many types of buildings, including homes, apartments, condos, offices, shopping centers, malls, high rise buildings, stores, hospitals, hotels, resorts, casinos, stadiums, government buildings, military installations, and many more. It is simply an exceptionally versatile and attractive product, and hence its popularity. EIFS can be used on new buildings and on existing buildings. EIFS can also be prefabricated in a factory as ready-to-install wall panels that incorporate an integral metal frame. The completed panels can then be truck to the site, lifted with a crane, and welded to the building's structural frame. EIFS can be attached to concrete, brick, masonry, plywood, Oriented Strand Board ("OSB"), various types of gypsum-based sheathings, and cement board. EIFS now accounts for about 10% of the new wall exterior wall construction in the USA. EIFS was developed in Europe after World War II and was first successfully commercialized in North America in the 1960's. Additional information about EIFS is available from the website you are now looking at, in the form of free downloads; click here.
In the EIFS industry, a "foam shape" is a name given to a piece(s) of foam plastic thermal insulation board that is covered with a thin coating system. The coating system gives the outside surface color, texture, and shape. The coating system may be traditional EIFS or some non-EIFS look-alike variant. The purpose of foam shapes is to enhance the appearance of a wall - thus foam shapes are decorative in nature, and are used mostly for "looks" and not for their insulation value. Foam shapes usually protrude from the wall, and take the appearance of stone, logos, decorative bands, signage, lintels, sills and so on. Normally when an EIFS wall is installed, most of wall is composed of a single basic EIFS product. Foam shapes are usually made of the same EIFS product as the 'base' EIFS material, and thus would perform like the "base" EIFS product (of which most of the wall is composed). In addition to their use with EIFS, foam shapes can also be used on non-EIFS walls such as stucco, concrete and block. This gives the intended aesthetic appearance, but sometimes these foam shapes are not "real EIFS" but are a hybrid product, even though they look like EIFS. Read on... Sometimes these non-EIFS hybrid foam shapes are integrated with 'real EIFS". and thus become part of the whole cladding system. The use of non-EIFS foam shapes in conjunction with "real EIFS" is not condoned by EIFS producers, as they have no control over the performance and compatibility of such hybrid wall claddings with their own products. In particular, foam shapes sometimes use base coats that are not reinforced with heat resistant materials like fiberglass, and thus they perform differently in fire situations than does real EIFS. This is what was reported as having occurred at the Monte Carlo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas in February of 2008. The use of non-EIFS foam shapes should be based on the same code compliance criteria as EIFS, and such non-EIFS foam shapes should be tested to confirm their code compliant performance. If a substitution of non-EIFS foam shapes is being proposed on a project you are involved with (perhaps due to a cost saving), check to see that the proposed non-EIFS foam shape is recognized as code compliant by the building codes. This check can be done by looking up "foam plastic" in the International Code Council's ("ICC") building codes website, and by reading about which products are the approved ones. This information is available as a series of free downloads of ICC Evaluation Services ("ICC-ES") technical reports (called "Evaluation Reports") listed on the ICC-ES website.
New EIMA Executive Director. EIMA has announced David Johnston as the new Executive Director of EIMA. David comes from BOMA (Building Owners and Managers Association) and has extensive experience in regulatory technical matters, and also in trade association operations. He will be working out of AWCI's offices outside of Washington, DC in Virginia (where he lives now), and will assume his duties the first week of July. Standards for EIFS. ASTM, is starting work to develop a specification of foam shapes (see OP-ED piece about foam shapes, above), and also for guidelines for how to inspect EIFS as it is being installed. Both these new standards will be discussed in terms of the response received to the first draft of these proposed new documents, at the next meeting of ASTM's EIFS committee (chaired by Mr. Thomas), in Atlanta in October. Details of the scope and status of these in-process documents (and others) can be found on ASTM's website by looking at the activities of the Technical Committee E06.58. "The Mostest EIFS Projects". Keep an eye open for the July 2009 issue of Walls and Ceilings magazine. That issue has the first part of a 2-part article of the 'mostest" EIFS projects": the biggest, the most bizarre, and so on. Fun reading - written by Rob Thomas. You'll be amazed at what can be done with EIFS. "Toxic Drywall". There has recently been some media coverage and technical work done on this potentially big 'problem'. The problem involves drywall (gypsum wall board), imported from China, emitting gases that can supposedly cause health problems and corrosion. Although EIFS, when applied over stud framing, normally does has drywall on the interior side, the drywall is not an EIFS product and the problem is unrelated to EIFS - EIFS does sometimes use certain gypsum-based sheathing as its substrate, but the type of gypsum sheathing used is not the type of gypsum board involved. This problem has the potential for being a big deal, as there are reports of tens of thousand of affected houses, especially in Florida. "TEC" (H.B. Fuller - 'HBF') Discontinues EIFS Business. The 'TEC' brand of EIFS, (one of many products lines within the large H. B. Fuller parent company), is now no longer active in the EIFS industry. Comment: TEC has been one of the smaller national players in the EIFS business for decades, and has thousands of completed EIFS projects. But over the years people have wondered why they were in the business at all - perhaps because it was easy from HBF to make the EIFS products - as HBF makes a wide range of similar products (see LINKS, above, for details about H. B. Fuller in general). If you are involved with products that use TEC's EIFS, I suggest you contact HBF for further details. EIMA - AWCI Integration (click to see EIMA press release): Please also see directly below the posting in the 'What's News' portion of this website regarding this matter. It looks like EIMA will be moving its offices to AWCI's offices in the Washington, DC area. A successor for Steve has not been named. It appears that EIMA and AWCI will be working together in some sense terms of sharing services (admin, office space, etc.) whilst EIMA is to remain independent. EIMA - Staff Changes - and What Else? The trade association in the USA for EIFS is the Atlanta-based EIFS Industry Members Association, also known as EIMA. At the end of 2008 EIMA's Executive Director, Steve Klamke, retired. The question now is "What will happen next?". A search is underway to find a replacement for Steve. There is also talk about relocating EIMA from Atlanta, or even EIMA becoming affiliated with another trade association. This is a significant matter, as EIMA was instrumental on a national level in recent years in a wide range of marketing, technical and legal issues regarding EIFS. EIFS Research: The EIFS Industry Members Association (aka "EIMA - see also directly above) has published a document that describes recent technical research undertaken in conjunction with the US Government about the performance of EIFS. In particular, it addresses thermal and moisture issues of EIFS-clad wall versus other wall types. Worth reading. Click here to read. (It's a big PDF file, so give it a chance to download). This is important research and documents what the EIFS industry has been saying for years, namely, that EIFS performs as well or better than traditional claddings in terms of thermal and moisture behavior. Magnesium Oxide Sheathing Board ("MgO" Board): MgO is a high performance mineral-based sheathing. It can be used as a substrate for EIFS and stucco and more. MgO is a widely-used product overseas, and is now being used in North America. This sheathing has the potential for being the next generation of drywall-like sheet sheathing products due to its strength and water resistance. Click here to go to Walls & Ceilings magazine for an informative article (by rgTHOMAS) on this product.
Here are handy links to websites that deal with EIFS and like-products:
ARCHITECTURAL CONSULTANT - America's EIFS* Expert - Since 1980
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