WHY NOT ADHESIVES PLUS FASTENERS?
The question often arises about whether there are advantages to using adhesives and mechanical fasteners together at the same time. The answer is yes and no. One would think that adding mechanical fasteners to an adhesively attached system would markedly increase the pull off strength of the EIFS. It doesn’t. What really happens is the adhesive does all the work (since it is a more rigid form of attachment and doesn’t “give”), and when the adhesive finally lets go, the fasteners are immediately overwhelmed. Thus, there’s no big benefit strength-wise, under normal conditions. The story is different if the substrate deteriorates or the adhesive lets go (for example, on a painted wall that the adhesive appeared to stick to properly). Often mechanical fasteners go directly into the stud framing, and thus the sheathing is redundant—it acts as a spacer and a flat backing, in terms of the EIFS’ need for it from a structural standpoint. In such a case, if the sheathing fails, at least there is
