I would like to share the quote from Robert G. Thomas' E.I.F.S. New Construction Inspection Guide... "EIFS walls don't crack unless something is wrong!!! Recommend further evaluation/repair by an EIFS specialist." Well, this week I was baptized by fire with my first EIFS Moisture Intrusion Evaluation. It is never just a simple starter home to get your feet wet. Instead, it was a 1.2 million dollar 1987 mansion in the hills above Salt Lake City.
1.2 million dollars!!! That is incredibly expensive in our part of the country..... Liability wise, this might not mean much to all of you, but you quickly learn as you become more familiar with EIFS, when EIFS is leaking there are potentially tens of thousands of dollars of damage or more. Combine this with the fact that there is no Errors & Omission insurances available for EIFS Moisture Intrusion Testers..... This is a potential time bomb for future litigation.
INVENTING THE WHEEL - Being the first inspector in my time zone to start testing for moisture in EIFS, I found myself having to invent everything. This included a contract and reporting format. Let me list the items that I had the privelege or doing this past week just to be able to crank out my very first EIFS inspection report. Here is the quick list:
- Spending over $2,400 on EIFS testing equipment
- Learning how to use the EIFS equipment in the field
- Developing a Service Agreement Contract for EIFS Moisture Intrusion Evaluations
- Developing an EIFS Caulking Agreement for EIFS Moisture Intrusion Evaluations
- Developing a computerized EIFS reporting format
- Learning how to interpret the findings of the elevated EIFS moisture readings
- Learning how to walk the appropriate line between Chicken Little and the all is well "Everything's All Right With Caulk" attitude. A professional EIFS inspector should walk the middle ground and only swing out to the far reaches of the pendulum swing when it is appropriate.
- Learning how to properly summarize the massive amounts of possible EIFS reportable comments.
If you have ever sat back and thought that EIFS Inspecting would be easy money--think again. The ladder work is laborious. The thought process involved during the testing is intense. Making accurate conclusions in the presence of the owner is stressful. I found myself becoming one with the drop of water. I began to think like water. I began to envision the sinister drop of water laying destructive plans to rot out the structure. I spent time envisioning myself as the dark side of water and imagined what kind of destruction was going on inside the wall. The toughest part, or should I say the scariest part, of being an EIFS Moisture Intrusion Specialist is that you never actually get to see the damage in the wall. Sure you get to probe the surface after using the non-invasive meter, but you never get to actually see inside. There is a whole lot more to EIFS testing than buying some cool meters.
LESSON LEARNED: I quickly learned not to trust the readings of the non-invasive $1,000 Tramex Wet Wall Detector. This is a specialty meter designed specifically for EIFS Inspections. It turns out that it operates on electrical fields. The moisture in the wall allows there to be a completion of the flow of electricity from one sensor to the other. Water in the wall is NOT the only thing that will complete this flow. It turns out that metal in the wall is an even better conductor. If you take the meter and place it on traditional stucco it pegs the meter. The same is true of foil backed foam. Metal and wiring will also trigger it off. I equated the non-invasive Wet Wall Detector to a home pregnancy test. It tells you often that you are pregnant when you really are not.
