About The Everything Building Envelope Podcast: Everything Building Envelope℠ is a dedicated podcast and video forum for understanding the building envelope. Our podcast series discusses current trends and issues that contractors, developers and building owners have to deal with related to pre and post construction. Our series touches on various topics related to water infiltration, litigation and construction methods related to the building envelope.https://www.everythingbuildingenvelope.com*** Subscribe to the show and leave us a Review on ITunes! hbspt.cta.load(7045476, '56419422-e90d-4866-a0d5-18b00cdbc2e6', {"region":"na1"}); Bret: Welcome everyone to our “Everything Building Envelope” podcast. I’m Bret Taylor, professional engineer, senior consultant, too, for GCI Consultants. I’ll be your host today, and I’m excited to have with us Robert Koning who is the director of the Contractors Institute, Stucco Institute, Building Officials Institute, and he’s also the developer of the Sealed Cladding System. And he’s a consultant in the construction defect industry as well.Today, our topic is going to be the state of stucco. So, Bob, start off. And I’d like you to tell our audience a little bit about yourself, and then we can jump right into the state of stucco.Robert: Well, Bret, I want to thank you for this opportunity to join in this podcast and be part of it. My history throughout my entire adult life in construction, I’ve really done nothing but that, has been involved in the roofing, waterproof, stucco, and plastering industry. That’s been my main forte. Today, my practice is pretty much limited to education and training at the Contractors Institute, and, as you said, the Stucco Institute, and the Building Officials Institute. We provide examination preparation and continuing education courses for the construction industry.Historically, the stucco industry, as I was part of, that’s how I got into construction back when I was, after school, 16 years old, at a plaster mixer, and have never really gotten out of the stucco and cement-plastering trade. Still in it today, to a limited degree. But historically, we plastered these houses, we stuccoed these houses. It was a different process then, and we had no problems. Then, [inaudible Bret: Okay, excellent. Well, that’s an amazing life accomplishment you’ve got there with all the different institutes and your experience. I’m sure everybody is looking forward to hearing from you today. So, let’s get right into it. Let’s start with a brief history of stucco, just like you were mentioning earlier. About what year did you start, Bob, in stuccoing?Robert: I started in stuccoing back in the late ’60s, when I began. And as I said, still in it today.Bret: Well, that’s a good long time. And I’m going to take this opportunity to point out, too, that you were stuccoing in the ’60s. It was occurring before then as well. Stucco has been a viable cladding system in Florida, but…Florida since then, and before then, and continues to be so. And I think what we’re going to get into today is some of the items that we’ll cover. Some of the problems that have come up, like you said.