Stucco Repair in Tempe, AZ

A City That Has Finished Building

Tempe is boxed in — the 101 down the east side, the 202 and the river across the north, the 60 cutting through the middle, and Mesa and Chandler pressing on what is left. There is essentially no ground for new subdivisions, which makes it unlike everywhere else we cover. Almost every wall we are called to across the 85281, 85282, 85283 and 85284 areas belongs to a building that already exists, and usually one that has been worked on before. New stucco here means infill and remodelling, not phases of tract housing.

Block Walls, and Stucco Applied Over Paint

The neighbourhoods around downtown and Mill Avenue, and the older streets north of the 60 toward Tempe Butte and Papago Park, are heavily 1950s to 1970s ranch and masonry block. Plenty of those walls were not stuccoed when they were built. The stucco went on later, over masonry that had already been painted, and that is a bond which behaves nothing like plaster keyed into bare block. Add decades of coatings applied over one another and it is often the finish that has failed rather than the substrate underneath it.

Flood Irrigation Works on the Bottom of the Wall

Parts of older Tempe still take flood irrigation, and a yard that fills with standing water on a schedule puts stucco under a load the newer suburbs never have to think about. The damage concentrates in the lowest few inches: the weep screed at the base of the wall, the ground clearance above it, and whatever the water can wick into. It is also close to invisible from standing height, so the base of an elevation is worth checking deliberately rather than only the cracking at eye level.

What We Do in Tempe

Much of Tempe is rented, a good deal of it duplexes and small apartment blocks, so the person deciding on a repair is frequently not the person living behind the wall. That pushes the work toward scoped patching and recoating planned around a turnover date, on shared elevations where access is tight and neighbours are home. Water damage low on a wall is the other steady call. Either way the assembly gets identified before anything is quoted.

Tempe Stucco FAQs