THE
RETURN OF EIFS
By Nick
Moretti
Can’t get
insured to do EIFS repair? Forget about
it! Now, EIFS repair contractors can get
certified and warrant the work, with or
without insurance on EIFS repair
work.
If a company is willing to warrant EIFS
repair, insurance companies refusing to
insure such work become unnecessary.
Moisture Warranty Corp, of the Charlotte
NC area, has a simple solution to the
state of EIFS repair restrictions due to
insurance unavailability issues: Become a
certified Moisture Warranty EIFS repair
contractor and agree to have work checked
by a certified Moisture Warranty EIFS
inspector. The company will then warrant
the repair work allowing homeowners and
contractors to feel secure in the work
performed.
“Given the state of litigation in
the EIFS industry today, we are the
solution and perhaps the
salvation,” says Chris Burton,
president of Moisture Warranty.
“Instead of getting hammered with
lawsuits and doing tear-off and reclad,
this option is available and approved by
the courts (Moisture Warranty was the
“official” warranty QC
coordinator in recent legal settlements),
and that these systems can be salvaged
and restored to the cladding that the
manufacturers originally made.”
Warrant not insure
The amount of attention given to the
Moisture Warranty option has been
limited.
“Some repair contractors have been
leery of us due to the fact that any time
you involve inspectors, alert signs go up
in contractors, ”Burton continues.
“That’s because anyone
involved with inspections is often bound
to bring bad news. Some contractors saw
us as potential police of their
work-which we are-but not to take them to
court or encourage people to sue them but
to correct any mistakes made, sometimes
through no fault of their own.
Additionally, we want to offer homeowners
a non-litigation solution to potential
problems.”
Mike Minigh, quality control consultant
for Moisture Warranty, also laments the
“worst-case scenario”
solution usually given to homeowners with
problems.
“Homeowners are often told they
have no solution outside of stripping the
entire home,” he explains.
“The saying is, ‘If you got
EIFS, you got to tear it off,’ and
that’s not true.”
“Keep in mind, only sometimes is
the reaction negative to the idea of
inspection,” adds Kay Candler,
marketing director. “In different
parts of the country, contractors are in
areas where we can really help. We are
looking to fix these homes with a lasting
repair. Where it needs to be stripped, of
course we’ll say so, but it is
highly unlikely.”
Origins
The predecessor company that spawned the
idea for the moisture-free warranty was
originally called Stucco Pro, and formed
as an inspection company that licensed a
specialized testing and recording
procedure to home inspectors across the
country. Fifty-five affiliates tested and
documented, and instead of inspectors
producing reports, they actually did the
fieldwork and sent photos and documents
to the main office, which passed the
information as a finished report to the
homeowner. It gave the company a chance
to capture a wealth of data on what was
occurring in EIFS home construction.
“In 1999, when we started working
on the Moisture Warranty program, not
only did we discover what a tremendous
amount of data we had but also that the
problems were not nearly as severe as
homeowners were led to believe,”
Burton says. “The data also showed
that when proper repairs were performed,
the repairs worked. When fixed properly,
they rarely fail. Bottom line: If you
inspect and repair a certain way,
we’ll put a warranty on
it.”
This might mean huge opportunities for
contractors. Now, general liability is
all that is needed to cover potential
mishaps that have nothing to do with EIFS
repair coverage.
Both sides of the Dryvit class action
case approached Moisture Warranty. The
homes in the case needed to be fixed with
a warranty to back the repairs. It took
two years of negotiation but finally,
everyone agreed to a settlement. Both the
plaintiffs and defendants approved the
warranty in court. Now that the
settlement has put the official stamp of
approval on the repair warranty, the
company wants everyone to know what it is
and how it works.
“We want to involve everyone in the
transaction a solution process,”
Burton says. “Not just a warranty
but we are also letting people know which
inspectors and repair contractors are
good, what they should and
shouldn’t do to a home, etc. All
this is part of the solution process.
It’s typically about two to three
months from first inspection to warranty
issued.”
Contractor’s
prerogative
The process is that first, a contractor
goes through training to be a repair
contractor. It’s around $595 for
manuals and videos that will certify two
people in the company to do the repairs.
The certified individual is required to
be on the job every day-if not all day-to
inspect on the daily progress. The
failsafe for Moisture Warranty is that a
second inspection is done after the
repairs to ensure that everything stated
to be done in the initial inspection has
been performed.
Currently, the company is only warranting
existing construction, not new
projects…yet. However, plans are in
the works for both new residential
construction and commercial warranties.
Certified repair contractors are in high
demand, in addition to certified
inspectors. Any repair contractor in good
standing with Moisture Warranty will get
a lot of the work currently awaiting
repair.
Frank Guidera, CEO of Performance
Exteriors, a repair contractor in
Charlotte NC and current vice president
of CLAPCA, chairman of its technical
committee, and past chairman of
AWCI’s EIFS committee, is a
Moisture-Free certified repair
contractor. Guidera was instrumental in
working with Dick Hopkins on the EIFS
Doing it Right Program, and an instructor
for the inspectors and applicators.
“I knew about this program,
I’d been following it since the
class action suit,” says Guidera.
“I became a certified repair
contractor in early 2003. I thought it
was well written and it was right along
the lines of what they have in their
textbook and the tapes they give you. And
if you have any kind of job experience,
in addition to the text and videos, you
should pass it. But it’s not a
giveaway, I’ll tell you that. You
have to know what you’re
doing.”
Guidera looked at eight to 10 houses that
have been inspected by certified
inspectors and he gave the repair price
based on what they said and has agreed
with them across the board except on some
incidental things. He is still waiting to
proceed as the houses he’s bid on
must go through the process at
headquarters before work can begin.
“All the ones I’ve looked at
have been inspected but I’m still
waiting for the green light, “ he
says. “I fully expect to get the
work, bar none