New Construction Stucco in Brevard County

Block walls and wood walls do not manage rain the same way

A lot of Brevard houses are both, on the same building. First story concrete block. Second story, or a gable, stick-framed. Stucco over both. The plaster looks like one skin. Behind it the two walls are doing different jobs.

The block story is a mass wall. Water that gets through the plaster is supposed to soak into the masonry, which does not rot, and then dry back out when the weather lets it. There is no cavity to drain. That is why a block wall can look wet after a long storm and still be doing what it was built to do — up to a point. After the 2004 hurricane season the people who study these assemblies in Central Florida wrote down what happened when the storms stacked up and the mass never got a chance to dry. The storage filled. Water showed up on the inside.

The framed story is a drained wall, or it is a failure waiting. Paper or wrap behind the lath is the water-resistive barrier. A weep screed at the bottom of that framed wall is the way out. The code is specific on the screed: corrosion-resistant, at or below the foundation plate line, at least four inches above dirt or two inches above a paved surface, with the wrap lapped over the flange and the lath ending on it. Skip that at the line where wood sits on block and the upper wall has nowhere to dump what it catches. The people who wrote the Florida hurricane paper were equally specific about the mistake: do not drain a drained wall into a barrier wall.

We treat that transition as a detail, not as a place the stucco just continues. On a new two-story, and on an addition that lands a framed wall on an existing block house, that line is where a lot of later calls start. We would rather build it correctly the first time.

Plaster itself is not a waterproofing. The standard that governs how we put it on says so in those words. The coats shed and the details drain. Paint on the finished face is how a lot of Florida work keeps the rest of the weather on the outside, and that coating is its own trade, after ours.

Making a new room belong to the house

Bare block on three sides of a new room is a common call. The roof is on, the openings are framed, and every mortar joint is still visible. Block drinks water out of a mix, so the first coat has to go on with that in mind — too dry and it flash-sets against the masonry, too wet and it slumps. Then a leveling coat, then the finish carried around the corners in one go. Stop at lunch and restart on a different mix and you have given yourself a seam to hide.

The finish has to be the house's finish, not a close cousin. We put a sample on the new wall, against the old one, and we look at both in the same light before we run the rest. An addition that is "almost" the same texture is a bolted-on box. An addition that matches is a room that was always there.

Window and door openings on new work are where sloppy plaster shows. The return into the reveal has to be packed and tooled, not smeared toward the frame and hoped. Foam still showing around a new unit is not a finished opening. We mask, we fill, we stop cleanly at the trim.

If your builder is still on site we work off their schedule, not around it. Stucco is not the trade you want arriving before the windows are set and the roof is closed. We will tell the GC what we need in front of us, and what we will not coat over.

Salt does not care that the plaster looks done

On the barrier island — Indialantic, Satellite Beach, Cocoa Beach — and anywhere the wind comes off the water, the air carries salt. Salt does not sit on the surface. Chloride ions work into the plaster, break the chemical protection that fresh cement normally gives the embedded metal, and the lath starts to rust from the inside. Rust expands. Expanded wire cracks the coat that was supposed to protect it. That is a coastal failure, and it is why a beachside wall is not the same job as a wall five miles inland even when the drawing looks identical.

What we can control is coverage and the metal. The scratch has to bury the wire completely. Accessories at the corners and the base have to be the corrosion-resistant kind, not a painted steel that will bloom through the finish in a couple of seasons. We plan the stack for that exposure when the house is on the sand side of A1A, and we say so in the estimate so nobody is surprised later.

Wind-driven rain is the other half. A detail that weeps on a Melbourne ranch can be overwhelmed on a beachside two-story if the screed is missing or the wrap is reversed. The code line about the weep is not busywork out here.

Curing is part of the calendar, not a delay

Cement hardens by keeping water in, not by drying out. The scratch coat wants to stay damp for a couple of days before the brown coat goes on. The brown coat wants its own time before the finish. In August on a west wall, the risk is the opposite of rain: sun and wind pull the water out of a fresh coat too fast and the surface crazes. We mist. We do not chase a calendar that assumes the chemistry can be rushed.

Rain on a coat that has not taken a set will wash it. We watch the afternoon storms and we will move a day rather than leave a wall that has to be done twice. That is not padding. That is Florida.

Inspections sit in the same calendar. Lath is its own look. Base coats are another. We do not bury work an inspector has not signed off on just because the next trade is waiting. Tell us who is inspecting and we will be ready for them.

The addition should not need a caption

If the new walls still look new from the street, we missed. The photographs on this site are houses and rooms this crew coated, before and after. Each card carries the city we recorded. Cards with no city on file say Brevard County, because a guessed town is a claim we cannot stand behind. Tony adds and removes those cards from the admin; this page does not try to keep a running inventory of them.

Pictures of the new walls, and of the old ones they have to meet

On a new build, shoot the elevations that will take plaster, the openings, and the line where framing meets block if the house has both. On an addition, shoot the new block and a long shot that includes the existing house, because the existing finish is half the job.

Run those through the form on this site. The AI will give you a rough range in about a minute so you can see whether the work fits the budget you had. Tony still walks the job with you — and with your builder, if they are in the picture — and writes the real figure. There is no charge for that visit.