Toll Brothers
consumer fraud





Ask the pros- November, 2002
By Reggie Bullard


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



 
 
 

 

      I have just recently received confirmation from Toll Bros. that what we have applied to our house is
      “a traditional hard coat system that includes felt paper, metal lath, 2 base coats of a cement, sand and lime mixture, with a thin polymer finish color coat”.  Ours was apparently the third to receive this exterior after they switched from the synthetic stucco after getting so many complaints.  I would gladly pay for your time and opinion – I am still concerned about what we do actually have and its condition.  I cannot imagine that after the lawsuits they have recently been through with Dryvit, that they would lie about what's on our property, but nothing would surprise me!  I will await your reply or I will call to arrange an appointment.  Thank you for your time.

What you have is one coat "stucco" 
They say it has the strength of Traditional stucco, 
defining their product as something besides Traditional stucco. 
It is a material applied very thin with a synthetic finish. 
They didn't have plastic sand 100 years ago. 
The details such as window surrounds, quoins, etc. 
are EIFS, (Styrofoam) and are rotting your house at this 
moment., 
If you believe Toll Brothers then you are a victim of consumer fraud. 
I have tried to present my product, my trade, and the way I make a
living in a positive manner, trying not to bad mouth anyone too much, but now I am infuriated.
 THE TRUTH:
 Toll Brothers at least came clean and spent the money to tear off
the EIFS on 140+ houses in Northern Virginia, admitting that
EIFS rots wood framing, sheathing, etc. by trapping water in the wall.
The main point that the Toll Brothers homeowners won their suit is
that the houses were falsely advertised as having "stucco details",
referring to window surrounds, quoins, etc. that were foam and EIFS, and not stucco (portland cement plaster).
What were the details replaced with ? Foam and EIFS.
 Traditional is defined as a custom or quality passed down from one generation to the next. One coat stucco is probably less than 10 years old, a new material that hasn't had time to be passed down to a second generation. The finish coat material is the same acrylic paint and plastic sand that is used on EIFS. Maybe the rot isn't as severe with a cementious basecoat as with foam, and certainly is an improvement over flimsy foam, but still the product is falsely represented as "Traditional stucco" and it isn't.
This one coat stucco was called "hard coat" by toll brothers and others and applied by EIFS contractors-the same people who put EIFS on in the first place. What makes this grossly unfair to me, is unfair competition. I have to compete with lower skilled people applying a lower installed cost material.
Another large national home builder that came clean and is
replacing EIFS with other materials such as Drainable EIFS and
hardy siding is Pulte Homes. All this was done very quietly with
very little mention in the press. Why? Pulte and Toll Brothers are
large advertisers in the Washington Post. Much like the fine magazine Walls and Ceilings, once the voice of the plastering industry, publishes what their advertisers, the EIFS manufacturers, tell them. If you want the truth, come here, I don't have any advertisers nor do I get paid a nickel to publish all this.

Stucco news home   monthly column: No 6 in my 12 point crack attack    previous question