Should I be worried about this plaster crack?

Originally, it might have had metal frames.

Reply to
charles
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Well I had to call in at my parent's this morning so I asked him. And it seems other posters replies confirmed what he said this morning. The roof is only fastened to the inner skin. The roof can move for various reasons including a very heavy load on the mid span of the rafters, wind or settlement of the house on the other side to the crack.

My Dad's advice was "fill the crack and do not worry if it has got no bigger in the last couple of years and that the lintel has no bearing about the crack as it continues into the next wall".

He used to go out to the buildings that British Coal/NCB had underminded to see how many mm the crack they had caused by undermining the building opened up by each week-:)

Reply to
ARW

You might need to be careful with trusses as they are designed to support the load on their top edge and not on the rafter part. Too much load there could pull the joints apart. Having said that they should take a fair bit of load just nowhere what they can take at the top.

My tame structural engineer advised me to spread the 250kg load from my cylinder across four trusses to be on the safe side.

Reply to
dennis

You need straps like that at the gable end to stop the wind blowing the gable end down. You shouldn't need them elsewhere.

Reply to
dennis

My aunts house in Earlstowne, nr Newton-le-Willows, was thus affected in the end they, the coal board, decided it'd be easier to knock them down and build some new houses elsewhere which they did.

I do remember seeing the cracks, more cervices!, and if I was living there at that time I think I'd just have made a run for it;!..

It did always seem odd that such deep pits and deep mining would affect the surface like that.

Reply to
tony sayer

I suspect, from other houses in the neighbourhood, that the original frames were metal,as Charles suggests below.

Hmm - there is a lintel, but as you can see from one of the photos:

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It is actually only the same width as the window, & doesn't extend beyond! (The area painted white above the window). This is not something I've ever liked...

FWIW we have a later-built 'back porch' which didn't have a lintel at all; when I replaced the window in that I had to get a angle steel lintel installed.

jon N

Reply to
jkn

As per my later post, I guess that the original frames were metal, since replaced bu uPVC

I'm not sure where you get that 'the ceiling has gone the same way'? There are no substantive cracks in the ceiling, or at the corner between the ceiling and the wall.

What you may have seen in the photos as ceiling cracks are actually lines in the textured artex which have shown up bright in a few places on the images. Sorry if that is misleading...

J^n

Reply to
jkn

I wonder if someone jacked the roof during window fitting? There is some evidence of exterior brickwork movement, but it's not IMO serious.

Reply to
Capitol

The lintel probably *is* longer than the window width - it ain't a lot of use if it isn't supported on the brickwork either side!

If it's a one-piece lintel for both skins, the part supporting the inner skin - and ultimately, the roof - will be both taller and longer than the outer skin support. Even the outer skin support is likely to be longer than the window width, but will be cut back at the ends. The bricks either side won't be full depth, but will have been thinned down so as to line up with the other bricks whilst hiding the ends of the lintel.

[Google 'Concrete boot lintel']
Reply to
Roger Mills

Quite a lost skill, knowing the mines. I used to work for Stanilands in Doncaster - if it wasn't on the map, they knew about it.

Reply to
RJH

[useful stuff about 'concrete boot lintel' snipped]

Thanks a lot for the info, and the term 'boot lintel', that was very informative.

Cheers Jon N

Reply to
jkn

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