Stucco, Sealants and Keeping Water Out

A board spends a large sum on concrete restoration, does not address the failed sealants and cracked stucco that let the water in, and is back in the same position within a decade. It is the most expensive sequencing mistake available in this work and it is extremely common.

The sequencing mistake is easy to make because concrete restoration is the item the engineer's report emphasizes and the item the membership can see. Envelope work is less visible, less urgent-sounding, and easy to defer to a later funding year — at which point the concrete that was just repaired begins taking water again from the same failed joints and cracked stucco that caused it.

Sealant joints have a service life measured in years rather than decades, and almost no association budgets for replacing them before they fail. They are not glamorous, they produce no visible improvement, and the failure is invisible until water has already been getting behind the envelope for some time.

A joint replacement program every several years costs a fraction of the concrete restoration that failed joints eventually cause. It belongs in the reserve study as its own line, and it is one of the few places on a building where preventive spending is unambiguously cheaper than the alternative.

1. 01Survey the envelope with the engineer, not just the concrete.
2. 02Sound stucco to find delamination beyond the visible cracking.
3. 03Replace sealants rather than overbanding them.
4. 04Detail window and door perimeters properly.
5. 05Apply the specified coating system as a system, not a paint job.

Sealants are a maintenance item with a finite life, and almost no association budgets for them until they fail. A joint program every several years costs a fraction of the concrete restoration it prevents, and it belongs in the reserve study.

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