Stucco repair costs in Birmingham

Birmingham is built on folded ground. A USGS survey from 1907 describes the city and its suburbs sitting in long, narrow valleys split by ridges, with Red Mountain the main ridge inside the valley and Shades Mountain along its southeast edge. If your house is cut into a slope, the uphill wall takes the runoff and the splash.

That's the wall to watch. The National Park Service's stucco guidance names water splashing up from the foundation and poor drainage among the main causes of stucco damage, and a hillside lot hands that uphill wall both.

Storms here are serious. On April 27, 2011, an EF-4 tornado with winds near 190 mph stayed on the ground for more than 80 miles and tore through Concord, Pleasant Grove and Fultondale. A house outside the worst of a path can still take hits from flying debris, and every hole is a way in for rain.

If you live in Forest Park or another local historic district, the city's Design Review Committee weighs exterior work against that neighborhood's guidelines. One standard it applies says original exterior construction and siding materials shall be retained, repaired and matched. Even a stucco retaining wall in a Forest Park back yard went on its agenda. Ask before you change the look of an old wall.