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Two published numbers frame almost every EIFS job in St. Augustine. Crack repair runs $900 to $2,400. A full re-stucco of a wall face or elevation runs $9,500 to $18,000. Sealant renewal sits below the first figure, a localized moisture repair with sound sheathing underneath sits near it, and once rotted sheathing has to come out across a whole wall face you are into the second.
Those are Stucco Home Repair's ranges for St. Augustine, current for 2025 and 2026. What follows is which EIFS jobs land where, and why the same visible damage on two houses can produce estimates ten thousand dollars apart.
The low end: sealant renewal
Sealant joints around every window, door, light fixture, and utility penetration get stripped out and replaced with new polyurethane. Most homes need this every 7 to 10 years, and it is priced by the number of openings and penetrations on the house rather than by square footage.
This is the cheapest work on an EIFS wall and by a wide margin the best money spent on one. Sealant failure is the leading cause of moisture intrusion in St. Augustine EIFS homes, and every expensive category below starts with a joint somebody did not renew.
Doing it properly matters more than doing it cheaply. The old sealant comes out completely, backer rod goes in to control the joint depth, and the new bead is tooled against clean substrate on both faces. Caulk squeezed on top of failed caulk lasts one season and hides the failure while it keeps leaking.
Surface crack repair
Priced by the number and length of cracks. The finish coat and base coat are opened, new mesh is embedded across the crack, and the area is re-coated and color matched. Cracks that have not yet let water past the base coat are among the simplest EIFS repairs there are, and they sit in the same band as traditional stucco crack work.
The catch is that you cannot always tell from outside whether water has already been through. That is what the moisture readings are for.
Localized moisture damage, under about 20 square feet
The EIFS layers come off in the affected area, damaged insulation board is replaced, plywood or OSB sheathing is repaired or replaced where moisture has caused rot, and the system is rebuilt from the substrate out. Cost tracks the amount of sheathing that has to be replaced far more than the visible area of the finish coat.
This is where estimates from different contractors diverge most, because a contractor who has not probed the wall is pricing the stain, not the damage.
Larger areas, roughly 20 to 100 square feet
Larger areas of water damage usually involve more than one entry point. The work is the same as a localized repair, scaled up, with more sheathing replacement and a longer rebuild. The price climbs faster than the area does, because the odds of finding a second problem rise with every square foot opened.
Full wall section replacement
When damage covers the majority of a wall face, it is more cost-effective to strip the entire EIFS system off that wall, repair the full substrate, and install a new system from scratch. This is where the $9,500 to $18,000 re-stucco range applies, and it is priced per wall based on scope.
It is the most expensive category and it produces the most durable result, because the wall gets rebuilt with a drainage path rather than patched back to the condition that failed.
Window flashing correction
Priced per window. Improperly installed window flashing is one of the most common causes of EIFS moisture damage in St. Augustine homes, and correcting it means removing the EIFS around the opening, installing proper pan flashing tied into the weather-resistive barrier, and rebuilding the EIFS around the window.
It costs more than resealing the same window and it is the only one of the two that fixes anything. Resealing a window whose pan flashing was never installed buys twelve to eighteen months.
What pushes a job above its range
Hidden damage. Barrier EIFS, the type installed on most Northeast Florida homes built from the 1980s through the early 2000s, was designed to keep water out entirely with no drainage path behind it for water that got in anyway. So what looks like a small problem on the surface can extend several feet in every direction once the outer layers come off. The accurate number comes after moisture testing, not after a visual walk. Our free inspections include moisture probe readings at suspect areas, which is why our estimates tend to change less between the quote and the invoice.
Second-story access. Scaffolding or a lift adds to the project cost. Many St. Augustine homes, particularly in communities like Palencia and World Golf Village, carry EIFS on a two-story facade.
Substrate condition. If the sheathing behind the EIFS has rotted, it is replaced before anything new goes on. Sheathing replacement adds material, labor, and calendar time.
Permitting. St. Johns County requires permits for EIFS work involving structural repairs. Fees are modest against the job, but inspection scheduling affects the timeline.
Color matching complexity. Older finishes that have faded unevenly take more skill and more time to match. Twenty years of color matching gets you a closer result, not a faster one.
What pulls it down
Catching problems early is the whole game. A sealant renewal today is the difference between a maintenance line item and a sheathing replacement in three years.
Bundling helps. If several areas need attention, doing them as one project means one setup, one material order, and one color match rather than three of each.
Scheduling in the cooler months, roughly November through February, avoids the summer rain delays that stretch exterior work in St. Augustine, and availability is generally better.
And keeping sprinklers off the walls, maintaining gutters, and looking at the joints once a year costs nothing and prevents most of what is listed above.
Repair or replace?
The threshold is how much of the system is damaged. Repair is the right call when damage is localized, typically under 30% of total wall area, the substrate is sound everywhere else, and the rest of the system is performing.
Full replacement makes sense when moisture damage is spread across multiple walls, the house is already being renovated, or the owner wants off EIFS and onto a different cladding entirely. Converting costs more than repairing, because the entire existing system has to come off before the new one goes on.
For most St. Augustine homes, targeted repair is the right answer. A properly maintained EIFS wall has decades of service left in it once the damaged areas are rebuilt and water is kept out of the joints.
Before you get a number
If you are not sure what to look for on your own wall, our checklist of signs your EIFS needs repair covers the visual, touch, and indoor tells. If you are not certain you have EIFS at all, EIFS vs traditional stucco explains how to tell in about ten seconds and why the answer changes the repair.
Stucco Home Repair offers free EIFS inspections for homeowners in St. Augustine, Jacksonville, Ponte Vedra, Nocatee, Palm Coast, and the surrounding St. Johns County communities, including tap testing and moisture probing rather than a look from the driveway. Call (904) 526-2075 to schedule, or read what our EIFS repair and installation and water damage repair work covers.