STUCCO NEWS.NET

Reggie,

Just a quick question about the acrylic additives that you mention on your site. Are there any you could recommend (besides Milestone, as it's not readily available here)? We live in Northern New Jersey and are trying to figure out which manufacturer to use. Our contractor has already begun using California Stucco's scratch and brown coats, but we just now read about your acrylic advice. My husband and I want a cement finish coat - the contractor will do it, though he thinks the elastomeric one is better(!!) - but we'd like to have a color system that works with an acrylic additive. I believe California Stucco warns against adding anything to their products.

Any help/recos you could provide would be most appreciated.

Thank you for your wonderful site - it's a treasure trove!

We usually mix acrylic half and half with water, and mix this into our finish coat, instead of pure water. My preferred brand is flex-con, but there are others.

The advantage of acrylics in the finish coat:

1. Good color retention

2. No shrinkage cracks.

3. No check cracks.

4. Fewer cracks due to other reasons due to high flexural strength.

5. Incredible bonding strength, insurance that the mortar won't fall off the wall.

6. More than double the compressive strength. This is great for rebuilding old deteriorated masonry.

7. Less porous material, for good water resistence.

We use Flex-con, made by Euclid chemical. The most popular brand is Acryl 60, made by Thoro, but Flex-con is usually half price,and is just as good.

Another good brand is Akryl7T by Tamms Corporation.

There is a brand from Baltimore called Kaufmann. It is probably a really good product, but the buckets I got had been frozen and I had bad results, and have never used it since.

They ship this stuff in uncovered trucks in the winter. Once the materials freezes, it separates nad is no good. The state of Virginia uses Kaufmann products, so they are probably OK, I just won't buy them unless I can open the bucket first to see if it has ever frozen.

Kaufmann does have good technical support if you want to call them.

We have been using acrylics heavily for the last 12 years or so and it has increased the quality of our product dramatically.

Any large building supply in you area will have at least one brand of acrylic bonding admixture. That is a supply that deals with large construction companies, or carries concrete products.

One disadvantage of acrylics is that are are a little toxic, for concern about green and renewable building. They contain no V.O.C.'s and are only a fraction of the toxicity of a thin layer of acrylic paint, and far less toxic than synthetic stucco finishes.

Please check out what I said about Chemical bonding agents here:   CHAPTER 7: BONDING MORTAR-PLASTER AND CEMENT.