Why Stucco Siding Is a Great Choice for Your Home

Why Stucco Siding Is a Great Choice for Your Home

January 28, 2021

Stucco siding is very commonly used in Spanish and Mediterranean architecture, and is frequently found throughout the American West (particularly the Southwest). Homes with stucco siding might have it in any number of textures, including smooth, pebbled, swirled and more, with the texture depending on the kind of application technique used for installation.

If you’re looking at purchasing a house that already has stucco installed or are considering adding stucco to the exterior of your home, it’s important to know the pros of stucco siding in Bluffton, SC so you fully understand what you’re getting into. Here’s an overview of what you should know about stucco and why so many people enjoy it as a form of siding.

Benefits of stucco

Stucco remains a very popular form of siding on homes after a long history of being used in various applications and climates around the world. One of the original reasons it became so appealing was for its fire resistance, which is why you’ll often find it used in homes in hot, dry climates that are more susceptible to potential wildfires. An inch-thick coating of stucco will provide a one-hour firewall rating, which means it will take at least an hour for the fire to spread from one side of the wall to the other. This gives a much larger window of time for families to safely get out of the house, and also makes it easier to meet the strict fire codes enforced in some neighborhoods.

There are, of course, a lot of aesthetic benefits to stucco as well. Many homeowners find stucco to be a great choice for their home simply because it creates a unique, appealing texture. You don’t just have to use the standard gray or white concrete colors, either—there are all kinds of hues you can create by mixing in dyes, which allows you to complement other colors on your home and around your property.

How stucco is applied

There are several methods that can be used to apply stucco. The traditional method involves a three-coat process over a wood-frame exterior. You begin with a scratch coat over a metal lath that gets attached to the exterior frame, followed by a brown coat to adhere to that rough surface. The brown coat is designed to improve strength, and act as a base for the finish coat, which is hand-troweled for a custom appearance and is what gives the stucco its aesthetically pleasing look.

Two-coat stucco is an approach used for brick, block and concrete walls, because there is already existing masonry in place, so you don’t have to worry about the scratch coat on metal lath. Instead, there will be a bonding adhesive stuck to the masonry wall before two coats of stucco are added.

Finally, a one-coat version involves using a stucco mixed with fiberglass that gets applied on top of metal lath. This is a relatively new process that isn’t quite as common.

For more information about the pros of stucco siding and what you should know about its installation, contact Spring Construction to speak with an experienced stucco contractor in Bluffton, SC.

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