Everyone knows school facilities – especially high schools – represent huge construction challenges. Students are notoriously hard on the building materials, straining the ability of buildings to meet the lifecycle expectations for the investment made in the construction costs. Layer on top of that challenge some of the harshest weather conditions any school department could face, and you begin to see the challenges confronting the Anchorage, Alaska School District. Against the backdrop of those extreme challenges, the Anchorage School District consistently turns to a building technology that addresses their challenges, and gives them benefits that reduce the long-term cost and enhance the performance over time. They turn to Dryvit EIFS. And they have been doing so for more than a decade on as many as 35 new school buildings over the past 10-15 years. “Dryvit EIFS has been the product of choice for a majority of our schools here,” says Chris Lynch of the Anchorage School District. “The architects who design these schools make the product choice, but since we’ve been so happy with the results we’ve gotten over the years with Dryvit, it has been easy for us to continue using Dryvit EIFS on our schools. It works.” Lynch says the design flexibility is a nice feature for the schools, which often incorporate as many as four colors on the buildings. But it is the performance of the cladding that ultimately has sold the district on Dryvit EIFS. Eagle River High School “Energy efficiency is very important to us, as you might imagine. Since the insulation is placed on the outside of the wall, thermal breaks are eliminated, minimizing the cold transfer through the metal studs; and that keeps our heating costs down and the buildings more comfortable for our students. In Alaska, that’s extremely important,” Lynch said. Architect Hans Geisler of the Anchorage firm USKH, who designs many of the Anchorage schools, echoes the school district’s view of the role Dryvit EIFS plays in the school construction boom that has been going on. “Insulation value. Color selection. The ability the material affords us to reveal different aspects of the design,” says Geisler in listing the reasons why his firm uses Dryvit EIFS on so many of their school projects. “Dryvit has been used quite often on school projects in this area over the years, and it has held up very well. We like the fact that we can use a lot of finishes, textures and colors to create interesting looking buildings that also perform well. Dryvit has worked very well for us; we also use it on a lot of office buildings and commercial buildings here for the same reasons.” Alcan General Contractors, Inc. of Anchorage built several of the schools, including Dimond High School in the city. They, too, are bullish on the use of Dryvit EIFS on their school projects. “One of the reasons we’ve had such success with the Dryvit product on our schools is the fact that we have a great applicator (Custom Walls) that does a really great job for us," said Steve Jelnick, project manager at Alcan. “The project really looks great, and that has a lot to do with the job the applicator did for us.” While pleased with the compliment, Tony Shandy of Custom Walls says that such high opinions of Dryvit EIFS on schools in Alaska are nothing new. He has been installing the Outsulation Plus System on schools exclusively for the past several years. “We’ve been doing school jobs up here for a long time – since the 1980’s,” Shandy said. “We have always used Dryvit. It’s a quality product, and it is the brand we use exclusively in our work. They are constantly improving the technology and their systems, so we go with them all the time.” Even in the most extreme conditions, Dryvit EIFS offer unique design and performance advantages over other cladding systems. If Dryvit EIFS has emerged as the cladding of choice in a climate as challenging as Anchorage, Alaska, it should be the obvious choice in the more temperate and less challenging climates in the “lower 48”.