who to hire to check wall crack?

[peter]

I have several concerns about my 20 year old house

There is a vertical crack on the 2nd (top) floor of the house Extending from the top of the ceiling down about 3 feet. It seems to have developed recently and this has been a wet and rainy season (washington state). The crack look like a long thin V shape, no shearing. The widest space (top of the V) is about 1 to 2 mm. I need to know what is causing this and how to either reverse or stop it from getting worse.

Who should I hire to check/fix this problem? A civil enginner? A house inspector? A general contractor? I prefer a "one-stop" shopping solution, unless doing so would significantly compromise the quality of the solution. I have the internet and yellow pages, but don't know where to look.

[effi]

assuming the wall is drywall, this could be a do it yourself project here's a relevant link

may need to texture the repair to match you wall if it is textured

this could be done with a small paint brush after you apply the patching material (instead of sanding it like the article referenced above mentions) or, conversely, you could sand the repaired area then get a can of spray texture and try to match it that way

if you cannot do it yourself, contact someone who can repair drywall (look in yellow pages), it shoudl be a relatively inexpensive repair

[m Ransley]

House is probably settling it is common. 1mm is nothing to worry about but other signs would be doors not square in the frames, windows not working well and things getting out of level. Start looking in the basement for cracks. but 1mm is nothing to get upset about, winter summer expansion contraction will contribute to this. Maybe that wall or a drywall joint was bad .