Exterior Insulation and Finish Systems (EIFS) in 2014 “The stars align for EIFS” Special to the Canadian Design and Construction Report Submitted by the EIFS Council of Canada In the not too distant past, the term “EIFS” (pronounced eefs), was understood by certain sectors of the design community to mean a ‘lower cost cladding” (emphasis added) which effectively minimized the many building sci- ence advantages that EIFS provided. EIFS was no longer the acronym for Exterior Insulation and Finish System, but a label, a word having its own definition quite unlike the initialized words it represents. Today, the EIFS Council of Canada would like the designer and user communities to revisit EIFS, and in doing so, redefine their perceptions to fit with current technology and understandings. Historically, EIFS have been used on all building types, from small to very large and in a variety of architectural styles. This led to EIFS being best known for its design flexibility. Unfortunately, the flexibility that was meant to 52 – Winter 2015 — The Canadian Design and Construction Report be exclusively available to the aesthetic, was extended to functional design features and limitations, as well as to ap- plication canon that had preserved EIFS performance for its first 25 years of use in North America. The result was what came to be known as the EIFS water intrusion crisis. The various contributory factors have been explored, dissected, examined and debated over in- numerable papers and articles and won’t be unpacked here. The bottom line was EIFS needed to change, and it has. Although much has changed, foundationally, EIFS re- mains an Exterior Insulation and Finish System, with the greatest emphasis deservedly placed on its insulating na- ture. Coming into 2015, expectations on enclosure systems are very high. The EIFS industry has done its homework to ready itself to meet these expectations and surprisingly to some, surpass many performance characteristics of alter- native exterior insulating strategies.