Stucco Contractor
Brooklyn NY

Why Stucco Fails Differently Across Brooklyn

Brooklyn is not one building type, and the stucco problem on your block is usually a product of how your house was built rather than how the stucco was mixed. On the attached rows through Bed Stuy, Crown Heights, Sunset Park and Bushwick, water that gets behind a front elevation has no sideways path to drain, because the side walls are shared with the neighbors. It runs down inside the wall and surfaces at the base, as a hollow sounding band a foot or two above the sidewalk.

On the freestanding Victorians of Ditmas Park and Prospect Park South, and the detached houses through Marine Park, Mill Basin and Gerritsen Beach, all four elevations are exposed. There the north facing wall is almost always the worst one. It gets the least sun, dries the slowest, grows algae that holds moisture against the finish coat, and goes through more freeze thaw cycles in a wet state than any other side of the house.

Along the water, Bay Ridge, Brighton Beach, Coney Island, Sheepshead Bay and Red Hook, salt is the driver. It reaches the metal corner bead and the lath through any crack wide enough to see, the steel rusts, and the rust pushes the finish coat off from behind. The first sign is usually a thin brown stain running down from a hairline crack, long before anything comes loose.

And on any Brooklyn building over six stories, the facade is on a recurring inspection and filing cycle. A parapet or a stucco wall that gets written up has to be repaired to close the condition, often with protection already up at the sidewalk. We handle that work and provide the documentation of what was done.

Brooklyn neighborhoods we cover

Bay Ridge, Park Slope, Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights, Borough Park, Sunset Park, Midwood, Flatbush, Gravesend, Sheepshead Bay, Marine Park, Brighton Beach, Bed Stuy, Crown Heights, Bushwick, Greenpoint, Williamsburg and the rest of the borough. We are based in Brooklyn at 1717 Avenue P, so most of these are a short drive rather than a trip across a bridge.

What the free estimate covers

We sound every reachable elevation for drummy areas, check the base of the wall and the grade, look at every corner bead for rust bleed, and look at the parapet and the roof to wall junction, because a large share of what gets called a stucco problem in Brooklyn actually started above the stucco. Nothing is owed for the visit and the scope comes in writing.