You do not need a cart full of expensive gadgets to spot trouble on your exterior walls. Stucco Inspection for homes in Taylorsville, UT can be done by checking your stucco yourself, learning what you can handle on a Saturday afternoon, and knowing when it is time to stop poking around and call in someone who does Stucco Contractor work every day.
Here around Taylorsville, our homes take a heavy beating from the weather. Between freezing winter nights down by the Jordan River and scorching summer afternoons baking the west-facing walls, stucco expands and contracts quite a bit. That movement creates stress, and eventually, stress shows up as Stucco Damage.
Before You Start Looking
Grab a notebook, a flashlight, and a camera or your phone. You want to walk the entire perimeter of your house on a dry day. Do not rush it. Take your time looking at the transition points where the stucco meets the foundation, around window frames, and right under the roofline where gutters might be overflowing.
What you can realistically do yourself:
- Walk the foundation line and check for Stucco Cracks
- Look closely around every single window and door frame for gaps in the caulking
- Check behind bushes and shrubs where trapped moisture loves to hang out
- Take clear photos of anything that looks odd so you can track changes over time
What you should NOT try to DIY:
- Climbing up on steep ladder angles to probe high second-story gables
- Cutting into the wall to check for hidden moisture behind the foam board
- Attempting deep structural patching on crumbling corners
During the Walkthrough
Start near your front entryway and work your way around the house. Look for stair-step Stucco Cracks near the corners of window openings. That is usually a sign of settling or frame movement. Hairline cracks narrower than a credit card are typically normal shrinkage, but anything wider needs a closer look.
Pay special attention to the weep screed at the bottom of the wall, right above your concrete foundation. If dirt, mulch, or concrete has piled up against it and buried that metal track, moisture has nowhere to escape. Elite Stucco Solutions sees this exact Stucco Damage issue all the time in older Taylorsville neighborhoods where landscaping has slowly crept up the walls over the years.
Tap gently on suspicious bulging spots with the plastic handle of a screwdriver. A solid wall makes a crisp thud, but a hollow, paper-y sound means the stucco has delaminated from the lath behind it. That means water got in somewhere and rusted the wire mesh, requiring Stucco Repair.
After the Inspection
Once you finish your lap around the house, sit down and look at your notes. If you found a few tiny hairline cracks and some dried-out caulking around the kitchen window, you can grab a tube of high-grade elastomeric sealant and take care of that yourself this weekend. Keep it sealed tight so winter freeze-thaw cycles do not pry those tiny gaps wide open.
If you found soft spots, widespread Stucco Cracks, or yellow-brown water stains bleeding through the finish coat, put the DIY tools away. That is when you bring in Elite Stucco Solutions to run a proper thermal or moisture meter test for Stucco Repair in Taylorsville. Catching water intrusion early is the only way to keep a simple patch job from turning into a full wall tear-out down the road.