Stucco Inspection in Chico, California: Moisture Testing, Probe Testing and a Written Report from Chico Elite Stucco
Chico Elite Stucco has provided stucco inspection for buyers and property owners, on residential and commercial buildings in Chico, California, for more than 15 years. You may be under contract on a house, or watching a stain widen on a wall you own. Either way you need a reading of what that wall is doing behind its finish.
We walk every elevation of the building, which means each face of it. We take moisture meter readings; the meter reports how wet the material is where nothing shows. We use probe testing, which reaches past the finish through a small opening. On a wall that is already built we establish whether it carries hard-coat stucco, a portland cement plaster troweled over metal lath, or EIFS, a foam-based finish that handles water differently.
We read what we find against ASTM C926 and ASTM C1063, the published standards that set how thick each coat of plaster goes on and how the lath beneath it is fixed. You receive a written report carrying photographs, marked elevations, findings and a proposed scope. A visit that ends in our own estimate for the repair is free; the written report is work we quote. We come out across Butte, Glenn and Tehama counties, including Paradise, Oroville and Orland. Call (530) 783-7384 or use the quote form for a free estimate.
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How a Stucco Inspection Reads a Wall
A stucco inspection runs in three stages, in a fixed order. We look, then we measure, then we probe where the measurement gives us a reason to. That order exists because each instrument answers one question and none of them answers the whole of it, so each stage narrows where the next one goes. A fourth instrument, thermal imaging, is the one you are most likely to be offered, and it belongs here for the same reason.
The Visual Survey and Where It Stops
We walk the full outside of the building, elevation by elevation, and that includes the faces nobody photographs. The visual survey records surface condition: cracks and their pattern, staining, bulging, the state of the sealant around windows, and how the flashing above openings is sitting. We look at the control joints, the deliberate breaks the plasterer puts in a large wall so it can move, and check whether cracking has appeared beside them rather than in them. All of that decides where the meter goes next. Surface condition and concealed condition are two different questions, and the walk answers only the first.
Moisture Meters and What a Reading Means
We press a moisture meter flat against the finish, and it reads how much moisture is in the material at the surface and a little way below, without cutting anything. Because nothing is opened, we can take a moisture reading every few feet across a whole building and leave no mark on it, which makes this the screening step. We work along the wall base and under doors and windows, since that is where water arrives and then sits, and we compare what we find there against a stretch of the same wall that has stayed dry.
That comparison gives you a location. A reading that climbs as we move toward one corner means water has been getting in near that corner and staying, which tells you where to investigate. How much damage sits behind the finish is a separate question, and wet material and rotted material read the same to the meter. The season a reading is taken in also changes what that number is worth.
Probe Testing Through a Small Opening
Probe testing is how we find out what the material behind the finish is doing. A probe reaches through to the sheathing, the wood board layer behind the plaster that rots. Sound plywood or oriented strand board pushes back against a probe. A probe that slides through has found decay. We choose the probe locations from what the walk and the readings showed us, and each opening is small and is made good before we leave.
The opening also gives the only direct look anyone gets at the water-resistive barrier, the sheet material behind the lath whose job is to shed water. We can see whether there is one, how many layers it has, and whether the layers overlap so water runs down and out instead of in.
What Thermal Imaging Can and Cannot Show
An infrared camera picks up differences in surface temperature across a wall, and it does not show moisture. A patch that reads cooler than the wall around it may be wet insulation inside the cavity, or insulation that is missing there, or nothing more than a stretch of wall that sat in shade an hour before. We use thermal imaging to narrow down where to check, and it settles nothing by itself. If anyone offers you an infrared scan as proof that a wall is wet, that is more than the image can carry. A reading and a probe at the spot are what confirm it.
Reading a Chico Wall Between the Dry Season and the Rains
Chico runs on a Mediterranean climate, which here means a long, hot summer with no measurable rain, and then rain concentrated from late fall through spring. A wall spends half the year with water running down it and the other half baking, and a moisture meter reports only the day it is used on. So the season your reading was taken in is part of what that reading means, and we say so when we tell you what we found.
Why a Summer Reading Understates the Problem
After months without rain, a wall that leaks every winter can read dry in August. Heat pulls the water that arrived over the winter back out through the finish, and the outer material gives it up first, so by late summer the outside of the wall has recovered while what sits behind it has not. A moisture reading taken in an extended dry period often gives you nothing you can act on by itself.
That is a reason to lean on decay probing, not to wait for the weather, because wood that has already rotted does not recover when it dries out. The damage stays where it is, and the probe finds it when the meter reports nothing. In the dry season we pick where to probe from the staining, the cracking and what you tell us the wall did last winter, rather than from the readings.
What the Wet Months Bring to the Surface
Once the rain arrives, the same wall reads closer to what it is doing. What hid all summer shows itself in the wet season. Staining darkens for days after a storm, efflorescence appears along the base of a wall, and a leak running while we are standing there can be traced back to where the water gets in. What you noticed last winter is worth telling us before we start, because the wall may not be doing it on the day we visit.
What an Inspection Finds on a Chico Wall
Everything we turn up in a stucco inspection is an observation tied to a place on the building. Where a finding sits is recorded as carefully as what it is, on a marked elevation, because the same crack means one thing under a window and another mid-wall. What kind of finding it is points to the next step, whether that is a sealant joint, a repair, or a section of wall that has to come off.
Cracking, Staining and a Hollow Sound
Cracking, staining, efflorescence and a hollow sound under a tap are written down with the elevation and the spot they were found on. Efflorescence is the chalky salt bloom left on a wall where water has moved through the material and evaporated, so it marks a route water has been taking. A hollow sound means the plaster has lost its grip on what is behind it. None of these settles what the wall needs on its own. Each tells us where to take a reading and where an opening may go.
Failed Sealant and Unprotected Terminations
Stucco walls rarely leak in the middle. Water gets in at the terminations, where the plaster stops and something else begins, so we check windows, doors, roof intersections, deck attachments and every pipe or vent passing through. A sealant joint at one of those edges shrinks and splits as it ages, and the gap it leaves is often the whole failure.
Horizontal surfaces are skipped most often. Window sills, pot shelves, decorative bands and plant-ons, the applied shapes fixed to a flat wall for looks, all present a flat top to the weather, and a flat top nobody flashed pours water into the wall below. Under a sill we look for pan flashing, the tray that catches whatever gets past the frame. Water arrives at a window head when the flashing above the opening is missing or drains inward. Where a roof edge runs into a wall we check for a kickout flashing, because without one the roof sends its runoff into that corner.
Not Enough Clearance at Grade
At the bottom of a stucco wall is the weep screed, a metal strip that gives water inside the wall a way out, and it only works with air under it. The screed has to sit at least 4 inches above the earth and at least 2 inches above a paved surface, and on older Chico houses we regularly find it buried.
Soil settles against it, mulch is topped up, or a new patio is poured higher than the old one. Once the screed is covered, water that reached the back of the plaster has nowhere to leave, and the wet soil feeds moisture back in. We record sprinkler heads that throw water at the base of a wall for the same reason. Some older walls were built before this clearance was required.
Decay in the Sheathing Behind the Wall
Water that has been getting in for years reaches the sheathing and the framing behind the plaster, and that is the expensive finding. A probe that passes through tells us there is decay at that spot. It does not tell you how far the decay runs; the extent is known once that area of wall is opened up properly, which is removal and replacement work we quote separately. If mold is visible on a wall that gets opened, a qualified independent specialist handles that assessment, because testing for mold and removing it are a separate trade from ours. We do not sample it, test for it or report on it.
The Written Report, and Where the Inspection Stops
You end up with a document, and what we do not cover in it is set out as plainly as what we do.
What the Report Contains
Buyers, sellers and property owners receive a written report in four parts. Photographs show the conditions as we found them. Marked elevations put each finding on a drawing of the wall it was found on, so someone who was never at the property can tell which face of the building and which part of it is being discussed months afterward. The findings themselves are set out one by one, and a proposed scope sets out the work they point to. You can hand the whole thing to the other side of a transaction, or keep it and plan the work from it in your own time.
What This Inspection Is Not
We are a stucco contractor looking closely at one wall system. The whole-house home inspection a buyer orders during a sale is a different service with its own practitioners, and a buyer in a purchase is usually served best by having both, one that surveys the entire house and one that goes deep on the outside walls. Structural, foundation and framing questions go to an engineer, and we tell you so. The Contractors State License Board defines the C-35 Lathing and Plastering classification around lath, metal stud channel work and plaster coatings.
Why Choose Chico Elite Stucco for a Stucco Inspection
The person reading your wall is from the trade that repairs it. That changes what you are left holding, because a finding arrives with the work and the price attached to it instead of an observation somebody else has to interpret for you. It is also why we open a small area before we put a number on anything, on every building we are called to.
What comes back to you is a proposal. You can act on it, price it against another contractor's, or set it aside, and nothing in it commits you to giving us the work. Here is what stands behind it.
- We have more than 15 years of stucco experience and are licensed and insured.
- That insurance is general liability and workers' compensation coverage.
- Free estimates where the repair would be ours to do.
- A moisture meter and a probe come to the property, and the wall decides which of them gets used and where.
What Happens When You Book an Inspection
When you book an inspection with Chico Elite Stucco, each step settles what the next one does.
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1
Tell Us What the Wall Is Doing.
Say on that first call or on the quote form what you can see, whether that is a stain, a crack, a soft patch or a smell inside after rain, and why you are asking now, because a purchase under a deadline, a house you are preparing to list and an unexplained mark on a wall you have owned for years are not the same visit. Photographs sent ahead let us arrive knowing what to look at.
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2
The Walk Around the Building.
We start the visual survey at every side of the building, including the elevation nobody called about, since water often gets in on one face and shows up on another. We begin low, at the base of the wall and the ground beside it, and work up.
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3
Readings, and Probes Where They Are Warranted.
We take moisture readings low on the walls and around the openings, then use probe testing where a reading or something we saw warrants a closer look.
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4
The Report and What You Do Next.
Everything from the visit reaches you as one written report, with a proposed scope for the work the findings point to. Call us on (530) 783-7384 or use the quote form when you are ready to start.
Stucco Inspection on Pre-1980 Chico Homes
A great deal of Chico's housing is pre-1980 construction, and on those buildings a stucco inspection runs in a different order. What has to happen before any part of the wall is opened changes, because of what older materials may contain, and the way a finding is written up changes, because the wall was built to the rules of its own time.
Before Anything Is Opened
On a building put up before 1980, material is tested for asbestos and lead before anything is disturbed. Both were ordinary building products at the time. Asbestos went into some cement-based coatings and boards, and lead into the paint on walls, trim and window frames. Sealed inside intact material, neither one reaches you. Cutting, drilling or breaking that material is what releases it as dust, and a probe opening does that on a small scale.
A test tells you which of the two is in your wall while the answer can still change how the opening is made. An inspection is the first point at which any part of your wall gets opened at all, however small, which is why the testing comes first. What that means for your visit depends on the building, and we settle it when we scope yours.
A Wall Built to an Older Requirement
Much of the older housing here went up before the current clearance and flashing requirements existed, so a detail that does not match what would be required today is not by itself bad work. We record it as a wall built to an older requirement, which is a different line in the report from a failure.
What to do about such a detail follows from what else is happening at that spot. Where a repair is already opening that part of the wall, bringing the detail up to the current requirement while it is open is usually worth the small extra cost. Chased on its own, on a wall that is otherwise dry and sound, it usually is not.
Stucco Inspections Around Chico and the North Valley
Butte County, Glenn County and Tehama County share the same shape of year, a long dry summer followed by rain concentrated between late fall and spring, so a wall in any of them is worked on by the same water at the same time of year. How much of that rain falls varies sharply between the valley floor and the ridge. What differs across the area is the age of the buildings. Between the valley floor and the ridge you find houses of very different vintages, and how old your wall is changes what we expect to find behind it.
From Chico, our service area extends east into Paradise, Magalia and Forest Ranch, south through Durham toward Oroville, Biggs and Gridley, west through Hamilton City and Orland toward Willows, and north toward Corning and Los Molinos. Our inspections cover Chico and all sixteen communities listed here.
Where Chico Elite Stucco Will Come Out to Look
- Paradise, CA
- Oroville, CA
- Durham, CA
- Magalia, CA
- Orland, CA
- Gridley, CA
- Corning, CA
- Forest Ranch, CA
- Biggs, CA
- Cohasset, CA
- Hamilton City, CA
- Los Molinos, CA
- Willows, CA
- Vina, CA
- Richvale, CA
- Butte City, CA
Stucco Inspection Questions Buyers and Owners Ask
What is a stucco inspection?
It is a close look at one part of the building, the outside walls and what sits behind them, written up so you can use it. A look at the surface alone is not one, because the layer that fails sits behind the finish.
Why does stucco need to be inspected?
Stucco keeps water out until a crack, an open sealant joint or a missing flashing gives it a way in. The damage then happens behind the finish, out of sight. By the time a mark appears inside the house, it has been going on a long time.
Is a stucco inspection necessary?
Not always. Where a repair is small, plainly visible and confined to one spot, an inspection can cost more than it saves. It earns its keep when someone is about to spend money on the wall, when nobody knows the cause of a problem, or when a wall would be priced unseen.
How often should stucco be inspected?
There is no fixed schedule. The yearly walk around your own house is a separate habit. Events bring a professional visit, such as a sale, a leak, a storm, or new landscaping that has raised the ground against the base of a wall.
How long does a stucco inspection take?
That depends on the size and height of the building, how many elevations, openings and decks there are, and how much probing the readings call for. We tell you the expected length when we scope the building, before anything is booked.
When should I worry about stucco cracks?
Watch for change more than size. A crack getting longer or wider, one that darkens after rain, and any crack with a hollow or soft area beside it are the ones worth acting on. What surrounds a crack tells you more than the crack does.
What's the difference between traditional hard coat stucco and EIFS?
Hard coat is a cement plaster shell on metal lath. EIFS is a thin finish coat over foam board, and it adds insulation value that hard coat does not. In exchange, it depends on water that gets in having a route back out.
How much does a stucco inspection cost?
Nobody can quote it sight unseen; the number follows your building. Where we would be doing the repair, pricing it costs you nothing, and only the written report is quoted work. Call (530) 783-7384 or use the quote form to have the wall looked at.
Ask Chico Elite Stucco to Look at Your Wall
We inspect stucco in Chico and across Butte, Glenn and Tehama counties. If something on your wall is worrying you, or a purchase or a repair is waiting on an answer about it, call (530) 783-7384, or ask through the quote form for a free estimate on your wall. We will come out, read the wall, and tell you what we find behind it.