Record Low Temperatures, High Energy Costs Putting
 The Big Chill on Home and Business Owners.
Scientific Study Finds EIFS Substantially More Energy Efficient Than Other Claddings.

     West Warwick, Rhode Island  (January 19, 2004)—Across the country, temperatures have dramatically fallen.  A blast of arctic air has thermometers hitting record lows.   Schools have closed.  Flights have been cancelled.  Ports and rivers have been frozen over.  It is miserable out there.  Simultaneously, energy prices are on the rise and home and business owners are being hit with another bone chilling reality, higher and higher heating bills. 

   According to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the nation’s pre-eminent scientific testing facility managed for the United States Department of Energy by UT-Battelle, LLC, one cladding provides substantially higher energy efficiencies for home and business owners.  That cladding is Exterior Insulation and Finish Systems, or EIFS, which was developed and introduced more than 50 years ago and has been successfully used on hundreds of thousands of residential and commercial projects.

    The ORNL analysis tested and compared the whole wall R-Value of six of the most common exterior cladding materials available in the marketplace: brick, glass stucco, pre-cast concrete, wood, and EIFS.  Importantly, the  “whole wall” test measures the insulating value of wall materials as they are actually used on a building, taking into account all typical wall details and interfaces and incorporating the studs, the insulation between the studs, the exterior sheathing board and the cladding material.

    The ORNL study concluded that Dryvit – the leading EIFS brand in the United States and the one used in the testing–recorded the highest R-Value in the test – fully 84 percent higher than the next best-performing cladding.  Unlike the other claddings, EIFS includes as part of its design expanded polystyrene insulation board which in turn helps produce exceptional thermal performance.  In short, the home or business clad in EIFS has insulation built into the building’s exterior.  The insulation produces a higher thermal performance and lower-energy requirements, which means lower heating and cooling bills for the life of the building.  The savings can be substantial as homeowners and commercial property owners using Dryvit EIFS cladding have reported energy savings of up to 40%.

    ORNL is a multi-program science and technology laboratory managed for the U.S. Department of Energy by UT-Battelle, LLC.

    Dryvit Systems, Inc. is the world’s leading manufacturer of Exterior Insulation and Finish Systems.