Eifs cleaning

Bidding this project soon for a fairly new customer. The building is EIFS with aluminum above. There is some common algae. What is cause the black is it cause the oxidation from aluminum or cladosporium. Also thinking about applying with xjet on a strong house mix.

I’m thinking you’ll need more like a good roof mix unless you want to make multiple passes. If it was a flat surface, you could probably get away with a strong house mix and increased dwell time, but on a vertical like that, I would go 50/50 direct application. Might still need two passes…

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Thank you for the advice

We do dryvit/EIFS as often as vinyl. Pull the proportioner from your x-jet, 3 oz of Elemonator instead of 5 oz per 5 gallons because this stuff is notorious for cracks and be prepared for double (or even triple) rinsing and going through a ton of SH.

If you don’t get the Elemonator out of every crack and crevice it’ll weep bright white lines. Our dwell time on shaded sides is 15 minutes unless it’s hot out then we treat it like the sunny side. Re-wet it with mix about every 5 minutes for 15 minutes. Streaks on EIFS may still leave faint staining no matter what you do. The texture isn’t favorable to any kind of stain. We’ve tried brushes and no real difference.

Check out Squid’s Pressure Washing LLC on Facebook at some of the commercial EIFs work we’ve done. Last I remember there were 3 jobs showcased, but might be more now.

EIFS is the new aluminum siding.

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Thank you sir very valuable information I will post result

Yeah, but EIFS ain’t new.

We have dryvit buildings here that are nearly 30yrs old. Our middle school is dryvit and it is 22yrs old…and it is not the oldest dryvit around here.We have a bunch of houses that are dryvit and over 20yrs old.

Could someone elaborate a little bit on the stucco / EIFS / Dryvit materials? I looked through google a bit and it seems like Dryvit is a EIFS manufacturer and people just refer to it as Dryvit sometimes, EIFS other times.

Nearly every single home and most plazas, buildings, offices, and commercial buildings here in Southern California is stucco. Or at least I thought they were. Now I’m not sure if I’m seeing stucco or EIFS.

Also, from a few other posts, people mention almost always needing X-Jet for stucco, but I haven’t seen that for EIFS as strongly as I have for stucco.

Is there a simple way that you guys can distinguish a surface material as to whether it’s stucco or EIFS? After researching a little bit, it seems like they are similar in the way they feel and look. I even saw that lots of home owners thought their home was stucco and then later found out it was actually EIFS instead.

Knock on it. Eifes is basically Styrofoam. Stucco is hard masonry

EIFS is a manufactured material 1in plywood with about 2in of foam them usually chicken wire infront of that then the actual outer material that looks like stucco. That is about less than 1/4 in thick. NEVER put pressure on EIFS soft wash only. You also be careful with chemicals start with higher dilution then work way down. Also if you want to tell the difference yes just like @Innocentbystander said just knock on it. It will sound hallow and stucco will be hard cement feel to it.

They clean the same. Just don’t pressure wash or stick a ladder agains either.

The only difference I’ve seen really is that the true stucco homes here go 7 years or more without heavy algae buildup and the dryvit/EIFS is 2-3. But we have 4 seasons and 3 of them include super wet periods.

Thanks for the info guys. That’s all the info I was hoping to get plus some extra.

I was reading this thread below too. I know it’s a few years old so I was wondering what you guys think of it. @Boss was saying that often times homes in the southern california area are just dirty/dusty and don’t have mold or algae. This is definitely true here, from what I’ve seen. Stucco/EIFS exteriors accumulate lots of dirt and dust on texture of the walls and it looks pretty awful, but 99% of the time, it’s just dirt and dust that builds up over time.

When washing houses/buildings that are stucco/EIFS but have no biological growth on them and they are just dusty and dirty, is “low pressure rinsing” sufficient? Would you guys recommend going ahead and soft washing with SH anyway? I don’t have an X-Jet so the best I could do is downstream. Would DS’ing SH have any additional benefit on straight dirt/dust at all over just rinsing everything with low pressure tips?

DS-ing regular ol house wash is what I did on 1 full side of $1.2 million dollar house (I’m just saying it was a BIG side) that looked dusty at best and the dirt and schmoo just rolled off. It didn’t need the full on X-jet treatment.

On stucco and masonry dual back your surfactant. Stucco holds moisture and soap and whatever longer than vinyl due to its porous nature and texture. Therefore it intakes longer to rinse if you use too much surfactant via x-jet/soft wash application

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Thank you @squidskc.