The best protection that a general contractor can give him or herself against construction defects and litigation is to hire quality control consultants that monitor every stage of the installation. Or they can hire stucco contractors with exceptional references and stop being penny counters always worrying about the bottom line. Many contractors award EIFS contracts solely based on the dollar amount of the bid with little consideration of expertise.
EIFS is so specialized that the majority of building inspectors, architects and GCs do not know if EIFS is being installed in the approved manner. Heck, must GCs don’t know the difference between a back wrap and a back slap. Experience has shown that the only way to guarantee that each step of an EIFS application is performed in the approved manner is to know as much as the subcontractor or have independent third party "in-progress" inspections performed by qualified EIFS consultants. Now I don’t mean one of those inspectors that have a grand total of 40 full hours of EIFS experience. If you want a true EIFS inspection hire a certified applicator or someone with more than five years actively inspecting EIFS shells first.
The ability to install batteries in either one of these very expensive pieces of equipment does not, I repeat, does not make anyone an EIFS expert or EIFS inspector. That’s right. Just like painting your car to look like a patrol car doesn’t give you the right to arbitrarily conduct random checkpoints, owning a handy dandy moisture meter do-hicky doesn’t make anyone a bonafide EIFS expert.
I can probably teach a primate to put the scanner thingy on the wall and when moisture is detected have him do back flips. That's all fine and well but once moisture is found the next step which is the remedial recommendations is critical and should be left to qualified professionals.
So who is better qualified to conduct EIFS inspections? I think the verdict isn't out on that one just yet.
Excerpt from EIFS 101 for Dummies
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