Cracks in house wall

[Keith Thomson]

My mothers house (a bungalow in cornwall) has a long crack. She says the construction of the wall is breeze blocks with rendering.

Pictures at

anybody have an opinion on the seriousness of this?

If it is not serious - what would be a method for a DIY fix?

thanks for any help

Keith

[The Natural Philosopher]

Medium. Your foundations have slightly subsided around the window area..or possibly heaved elsewhere.

Most likely a large tree somewhere near is responsible. Willow and ash are the two worst offenders.

You can either patch it cosmetically by raking out the crack and re-filling with render, or do the job properly and underpin some of the foundation - but before that you need to enlist the help of the local structural engineering firm to assess it.

[Dave Fawthrop]

|!My mothers house (a bungalow in cornwall) has a long crack. |!She says the construction of the wall is breeze blocks with |!rendering. |! |!Pictures at |!

crack is narrow and the ?bricks? underneath the crack do not show substantial movement , so I would do a cosmetic repair and keep an eye on it to see if anything is really moving.

[Mark]

Sgh... But picture

shows crack to concrete plinth, this one is not good you need to check for further movement, traditional method attach glass slide across crack with epoxy cement and see if / when it breaks.

[cynic]

How long has the crack been there and does it show signs of developing

[Broadback]

Somewhere I read that you put a matchstick or some such into the crack. If it does not fall out after a while then the crack is not growing.

[Andrew Mawson]

message

[e-mail]

developing

Looking at the pictures it looks to have been repaired (patched) before - the texture of the wall in close proximity to the crack is smoother than the surroundings

AWEM

[Keith Thomson]

There was a small crack by the window for years. There are also small cracks by other windows which have been there for years (the same with neighbours similar bungalows).

During the last summer it was noticed that the crack had got bigger.

Keith

[Roger]

The message from "Andrew Mawson" contains these words:

Which might be serious if the crack was really much wider than shown but ISTM that as the crack in the concrete plinth below could not have been masked in the same way the change in render in the crack margin above could be due to water penetration.

FWIW I wouldn't be worried by such a small crack provided it wasn't growing.

[Philipj.cosson]

No problem at all - until you come to sell...

[Hugo Nebula]

On Fri, 23 Mar 2007 20:10:34 GMT, a particular chimpanzee, [e-mail] (Keith Thomson) randomly hit the keyboard and produced:

There's your answer. The foundations are most probably of clay, not too deep, and there are trees within a few metres of the house. The crack will open and close in tune with the amount of moisture in the soil. In terms of stability, it very rarely causes a problem. If you're unlucky there may be a crack internally, but more often than not there isn't.

Unless it starts getting worse, do NOT be tempted to get the insurance company involved. Even if they decide it's not progressive and nothing needs to be done, you'll still go on a blacklist of properties that have 'claimed' for subsidence, which will bugger up your chances of changing company or any future buyers getting insurance from anyone other than your present company.

[Huge]

Hear, hear.

I wish we'd never claimed for what turned out to be cosmetic cracking. If I were doing this again, I'd employ a structural engineer to make sure the cracks aren't serious and repair them myself.