Lath Material Shortages & Schedule Impact

Ogden Division · Cascade Exteriors — last 12 months of purchase-order and job-scheduling data. Built to test whether field reports of lath-related delays show up in the Housewrap → Stucco Brown Coat schedule gap.

The frequency signal

348
Lath-shortage reorder requests (past year)
270
Distinct jobs that needed one
43
Jobs needing 2+ lath reorders
40
...same-day/next-day repeats

Out of 14,099 total unexpected/will-call order requests logged division-wide over the period.

What's actually on the ticket

"Lath" on a reorder rarely means the big wire-lath rolls that cover the wall. Almost all of it is staples and small-format accessory material used around openings and corners — and most of these requests are genuinely lath-scope only, not a grab-bag of unrelated items.

199
Reorders that are pure lath-scope (lath, wire, mesh, staples, caulking, flashing, expansion joint, popout bundles, weep, black paper)
149
Reorders that also pull in something outside that scope
ItemAppears on N reorders
Lath Staples 1 1/4" / Grapas Para Latilla 1 1/4"158
Little Staples R-19 / Grapilla R-19103
Strip Lath 4"75
White Caulking61
J-6643
Expansion Joint36
4"x3/4" Popout Bundles25
3/8" Big J-Flashing23
Strip Lath 6"21
Stucco Wire Corner19

Top items appearing on lath-flagged reorder tickets, by number of tickets they appear on (not quantity ordered).

When something outside lath scope does ride along, it's almost always one specific thing:

Item (outside lath scope)Appears on N reorders
Little Staples R-19 / Grapilla R-19103
Henry HydroTex Wrap11
R-19 1/4" Staples6
Little Staples R-19 / Grapilla R-19 COLOR: Any4
4 Mil Plastic Rolls4
Stucco Cement Bags3

"Little Staples R-19" is the R-19 housewrap/insulation staple, not a lath item — it's the most common thing that tags along on an otherwise lath-scope reorder.

Does it actually move the schedule?

Short answer: not much, at least not in stage-completion timing.

Jobs with a lath reorder logged during their own Housewrap → Stucco Brown Coat window averaged 10.4 days for that gap (median 9). Jobs with no lath reorder in that window averaged 10.8 days (median 8). That's a gap of well under a day — not the kind of difference you'd expect if lath shortages were a primary driver of the stalls.

By builder

Builder Jobs w/ lath reorder Avg gap (flagged) Jobs w/o Avg gap (unflagged) Difference
DR Horton 39 8.9 days
1801 8.2 days
+0.8 days
Edge 32 10.1 days
1923 10.1 days
-0.0 days
Woodside 15 7.4 days
435 9.0 days
-1.6 days
Ivory 13 13.2 days
206 12.2 days
+1.0 days
Element Homes 8 9.9 days
111 7.9 days
+2.0 days
Visionary 6 19.0 days
206 33.3 days
-14.3 days
Richmond 5 8.2 days
196 11.3 days
-3.1 days
Meritage Homes 3 4.7 days
30 9.7 days
-5.0 days
Destination Homes 3 9.3 days
26 13.6 days
-4.3 days
Century 3 8.3 days
10 6.4 days
+1.9 days
Flagged (had a lath reorder in-window) Unflagged

Builders shown only where at least 3 jobs had an in-window lath reorder, so the average isn't riding on one or two jobs. "Difference" is flagged minus unflagged — positive means the lath-flagged jobs ran slower.

Where the friction actually shows up

The reorders themselves are real and frequent — 43 jobs needed lath material more than once, and 40 of those were back-to-back within a day, meaning a crew ran out mid-install and had to stop and wait for a will-call delivery. That's genuine field friction and cost (extra delivery fees, idle labor, scheduler time). It just isn't showing up as a lengthened Housewrap-to-Brown-Coat window in the data — most likely because will-call turnaround is fast enough that it doesn't push the stage-completion date, even though it disrupts the day.

JobBuilderReordersReorder datesHW→Brown gap
472 – Ridgeview Cottages Ivory 5 2026-04-09, 2026-04-09, 2026-04-09, 2026-04-09, 2026-04-10 11
438 – River Point Edge 4 2025-12-23, 2025-12-23, 2025-12-23, 2025-12-23 12
Units 444-449 – Regency at Meadowbrook Woodside 4 2026-01-12, 2026-01-13, 2026-01-14, 2026-01-15 13
Units 432-437 – Regency at Meadowbrook Woodside 3 2026-05-19, 2026-05-19, 2026-05-19 13
Bldg 67 – Inverness Townhomes DR Horton 3 2026-02-12, 2026-02-12, 2026-02-13 11
101 – The Preserve at Alaia Visionary 3 2025-11-03, 2025-11-03, 2025-11-03 19
Bldg 10 – Inverness Townhomes DR Horton 3 2025-12-01, 2025-12-02, 2025-12-02 9
805 – Heron Hills Richmond 3 2025-10-28, 2025-10-28, 2025-10-28 5
Bldg 18 – Inverness Townhomes DR Horton 3 2025-08-05, 2025-08-11, 2025-08-11 16
32 (Lawyer) – The Ridge at Alpine E Builders 3 2025-12-03, 2025-12-03, 2025-12-03 14
8 (Wagstaff) – Gable Ridge E Builders 3 2026-02-09, 2026-02-19, 2026-02-19 50
523 – Ridgeview Cottages Ivory 2 2026-06-16, 2026-06-16 10

Top 12 jobs by number of lath-shortage reorder requests, this period.

What this means

The field feedback about lath isn't wrong — it's a real, recurring, and fairly concentrated pattern (heaviest on DR Horton, Edge, and Woodside jobs). But on this data, it doesn't look like the thing that's driving your Housewrap→Siding on-time numbers. Two things worth running down next if you want to keep digging:

1. Whether will-call turnaround time itself (order placed → material on-site) is creeping up for lath specifically — that's a different clock than the one measured here.

2. Whether initial takeoffs are systematically under-ordering lath quantity for certain builder/plan combinations, since 43 jobs needing a second (or third) order suggests the first order often isn't enough.