STUCCO NEWS.NET

I've been trying to find some help on answering a few of my questions and I stumbled upon your website. I was curious if you could answer a few questions to help me:

1 - I have a outdoor patio made of concrete and had a 3.5 ft wall put up around it. Someone talked me into using stucco finish over the block wall which i had done by a mason. The problem Im having is that they capped the block wall with brick and now the stucco is cracking due to the water seeping between the mortar on top of the brick and cracking the stucco. What would you recommend me doing? Can I just redo the mortar between all the brick and then reface all the walls without taking down the old stucco, its only a few cracks down the wall. Also I can tell where the blocks are because you can see the outline of them through the stucco, because I think the lime in the blocks are coming through (I see white outlines).

Any suggestions that you might have would be greatly appreciative.

We are working on a bunch of patio walls now. I have to tell you the truth-patio walls will almost always show water damage. These bricks are real porous and horizontally level. Not only are the bricks like a sponge, so is the mortar.

The bricks in the example above are at least projecting out past the edge for a drip edge. Walls where the bricks are flush with the edge or dont cover the edge usually have heavily water damaged stucco.

In the case of this 1958 stucco, the stucco was too thin. An honest 3/4" of mortar would have prevented cracks at every block joint. Please see what causes stair step cracks here...

I forgot to mention, but stones will be used to cap the top. Stones are more reliable than brick, but still water will soak through the mortar joints. Patio walls will always be water damaged.

We restuccoed some 15 year old patio walls in 2011. We taped off the stones, and covered the joints with some mortar that was less porous. This was my solution. 9 years later, the stucco was already failing because of water filtering through the joints.

The house next door. Not stucco, but I am showing that mortar joints always leak.

We restuccoed some 15 year old patio walls in 2011. We taped off the stones, and covered the joints with some mortar that was less porous. This was my solution. 9 years later, the stucco was already failing because of water filtering through the joints.

Loose areas are knocked off, and wall is chipped about every four inches or so for our chipping and bonding method of recoating the stucco. An extra half inch or more should guard against stair steps cracks in the future. More about our chipping and bonding method of re-coating painted stucco here...

Ceramic tubes are used for weeps. The original walls had no weeps. These look so much better than PVC plastic.

These ceramic tubes are called "thimbles". They are great for a Spanish style house like this.

Weep tubes are placed below the level of the brick patio so water runs freely in the weep.

Weeps are mortared in, and wall is coated with our basecoat. Basecoat is our standard mortar mix of portland, lime, and sand with 50-50 flexcon and water for a good bond. The acrylic also adds strength to the mortar, and makes the mortar less porous.

Where there is no brick patio, the weeps are put in the most deteriorated part of the block. Hopefully, our work will last longer than 65 years this time.

A view of part of the walls, with a basecoat applied.

Time lapse photography shows our white cement finish.

Weeps are taped off, and our Spanish texture applied.

Finished patio walls. Someone else will do the stone cap.