Furlong stucco remediation, inspection & repair

Part of Buckingham Township, Furlong is the main residential concentration of Buckingham Township, north-east of Doylestown along Route 263.

Housing stock. Densely built 1990s and 2000s single-family developments, many of them substantial four- and five-bedroom colonials, with stucco and stucco-plus-stone fronts very common across whole streets.

Exposure. Open, gently rolling ground with comparatively little mature tree cover in the newer developments, so walls take wind-driven rain directly rather than being sheltered. South and west elevations tend to show the most weathering.

What the housing stock here actually does

Furlong is one of the densest concentrations of profile-A housing anywhere in the county, and its stucco failures follow the pattern of the era with unusual consistency. The recurring detail here is the garage return and the bump-out roof: these houses were designed with a lot of articulation, and every place a lower roof dies into a taller wall is a place that needed a kickout flashing. Where it was left out, the water is not distributed across the wall — it is aimed at one square foot of it, continuously, for twenty-odd years. That is why an inspection here so often finds normal readings across three elevations and severe readings at a single junction. It is also why a partial remediation is more often genuinely appropriate in Furlong than in towns with simpler rooflines.

Working here. Generous lots with wide driveways and open side yards. Staging is rarely the constraint here; the size of the houses is what drives the scaffolding count.

Around Furlong. The work comes from the developments along Route 263 (York Road) toward Lahaska; the streets off Holicong Road and Upper Mountain Road; the sections near Bridge Valley Elementary and Holicong Middle School; the neighbourhoods along Furlong Road toward Buckingham Village.

On cost in Furlong

The houses here are big, and the price of a full remediation tracks exterior wall area far more closely than it tracks bedroom count, so a wide two-storey with a walk-out and a bonus room over the garage costs meaningfully more than its square footage suggests. On the other hand access is about as easy as it gets in the county, which keeps the staging component of any quote at the low end.

Furlong has a Doylestown postal address but is not in Doylestown Township or Doylestown Borough — it is Buckingham Township, with its own code office, which catches out homeowners and contractors alike when a permit is filed.

Because the developments here were built out in tight phases by a small number of builders, the specific flashing detail a builder used or skipped tends to be consistent across an entire section, which is why remediation work in Furlong so often arrives in clusters of neighbours.

Permits and registration

Permits go through the Buckingham Township building and zoning office rather than through Doylestown, even though a good deal of Furlong carries a Doylestown mailing address. As everywhere in Pennsylvania, the contractor's Home Improvement Contractor registration must be current, and it is publicly searchable.