Moisture intrusion in Florida homes

I am very unimpressed by the florida building industry and its apparent disregard to build watertight homes. I understand that in Florida homes are built to withstand the hurricane force winds, but the wall design of almost every home built in Florida relies on Paint only to keep the water out of the building. Take second storeys in homes which are timber built and are rendered stucco onto mesh. When the stucco cracks, (and it always does) it lets water in to the mesh which then rusts and blows off large amounts of stucco. Its so obvious that this is going to happen and yet the industry is continuing to build with systems that are known to be defective.

If only every consumer realised that their $450,000 home is only protected from the elements by a $4000 paint job that needs doing every 4 years at the most.

Interesting opinion, as it some cases, the applied paint may actually be the cause of the problem, thus “colored stucco”!

Good luck with your battle.

Florida is just now starting to somewhat realize how to install stucco over wood. It is very hard to convince people the stucco is not installed correctly when every house you are able to point to is also done incorrectly.