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The stucco sub for my new home
applied
cement on a cold, windy day with temps dropping from 40 to 20
overnight.
After I questioned him, he removed a lot of brown coat the same day and
says he will clean remaining loose cement off the scratch coat before
restarting.
One portion of brown coat, however, remains. In that portion are
two volleyball size spots that are soft.
Here are my questions:
If the remaining
portion is hard, is it okay to
patch the soft spots and keep the
rest,
or should we assume the entire
wall is compromised and tear it
down?...
(we’re talking about a couple
hundred square feet)
Is the cleaned-off
scratch coat probably
okay as a base, if hard? (another couple
of
hundred feet). Should
areas of scratch coat showing slight softness be stripped and started over?
He has been hydrating
the walls since
the freeze (but did none on wall
portions completed before the
freeze).
Will the stucco that seems hard be good, or do we now have substandard
stucco?
What a
mess… Thanks for your thoughts!
About the only way to make sure you get all
the frozen mortar off is with a hose or a broom. Frozen mortar is
powdery stuff which can
prevent a good bond. If you use a hose and the
wall is saturated, it may take days to dry out,
particularly in cold weather
A couple of volleyballs aren't too bad so you
may get by with just a good scraping.
I hope I never have this depressing experience
again.
We had to scrape the whole side of a house when
the scratch coat got hit by freezing rain. I had a finish
coat pop off once several years ago when we put the finish over a
frozen brown coat .
The scratch coat is never as hard as your brown
coat, the fact is you may be able to scrape your scratch coat easily
with a nail (even in warm weather) and not your brown coat.
The give away on frozen mortar is the color- a dead body grey that you can
spot a mile away. By now you know the color and should be able to
detect it.
It sounds to me like everything is OK
except the volley balls. Tearing stucco off is a real real chore, and
it doesn't sound necessary.
The frozen mortar should come off the scratch coat with a hose and
plenty of pressure, but again you'll have a delay waiting for the wall
to dry.
I don't see any good at all to hydrate the wall if it is too cold for
water to evaporate.
At least when it is cold you don't have any shrinkage cracks.
Don't worry be
happy.
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