Stucco & Exterior Work in West Hills
West Hills stucco built on a fiber-reinforced brown coat to limit shrinkage cracks, over sheathing and bracing checked while the wall is open.
Polypropylene fibers in the brown coat give a West Hills re-stucco a base layer that holds together as it cures. That matters on an inland lot, where hard sun and dry wind pull water out of fresh plaster quickly and open shrinkage cracks. Fewer early cracks means less water reaching the paper and sheathing behind, and dry sheathing keeps its grip on the nails that brace the wall against an earthquake.
Why the base coat gets the fibers
Cement plaster shrinks as it cures, and a base coat that dries too fast cracks before the finish ever goes on. Fibers spread through the mix bridge those early hairlines and keep them small. They work alongside good practice: misting the brown coat for the first days, shading a wall that faces the afternoon sun, and waiting before the finish coat so most of the shrinkage has already happened. The finish coat on top can then carry integral color, which avoids a painted film that peels.
The wall the plaster protects
Plaster is the outer skin of a wall that also has to resist an earthquake. Under it on a West Hills house there may be plywood sheathing nailed to the studs, a sill bolted to the foundation and hold-downs at the ends of braced panels, or the wall may have no sheathing at all. When the old stucco is off, we check each of those, replace wet wood and add bracing to an engineer's plan where it is missing. LADBS reviews and inspects that work, because West Hills is in the City of Los Angeles.
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Cracks that point at movement usually have a shape: a diagonal running out from a window corner, a stair-step line, a crack wider at one end, or one that returns after patching. Those call for a look at the framing and the foundation below. A loose web of hairlines is more often shrinkage, which fibers in the base coat help limit.
Lath, building paper and usually sheathing over the studs, though some walls carry plaster on wire and paper alone. At the base sits the weep screed, where trapped water drains out. On a West Hills job we expose a section early to see which build is there, since it decides how much bracing work joins the stucco scope.
Open framing makes it straightforward. Plywood goes on to the engineer's nailing schedule, hold-downs are set at panel ends, and LADBS inspects them before the new paper and lath. The fiber-reinforced base coat then goes over freshly braced framing.
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