What to do about that crack at the side of the stairs.

Tell him that if he turns his heating off to minimise thermal movement, and stops using the stair to minimise mechanical movement, then the cracking will be much reduced :)

Andrew

and maybe loses some weight?

Have the stair case mountings failed? Sometimes, the stringers are fixed to the walls.

On the staircases I have fitted I've rawlbolted the stringers to the wall. I hadn't thought they might be floating in the OP's case.

Perhaps a number of frame fixing screws/bolts might be a more permanent solution.

Fredxx snipped-for-privacy@nospam.com wrote in news:q2nmjn$lrl$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

Caulk is useless if there is any chance of movement. Would making an deliberate shallow groove be better than trying to fill it?

This one is a 1930's house, the underside is not accessible, it has been covered over. But I do wonder why they don't always fix the stringer to the wall.

Silicone won't take paint, ridgid fillers will fail. What do you mean by "caulk" flexible decorators caulk or something else?

With timber humidty causes much greater movement than temperature. Seems that this is a old staircase and may just be moving in use due to it's age and wear.

Yes I mean flexible decorators caulk. You paint over it and it's the paint that cracks. Often the caulk itself loses it's flexibility and curls at the edges.

I know that you can't paint over silicone. I am thinking of a bead that is applied after decorating much as you would around a kitchen worktop. I have seen new beech skirting boards fitted in an office and the gap between the skirting board and the wall filled with silicone.

What about a bit of quad or decorative wood beading?

The return on the wall at the bottom is rounded so a beading would have to start a few inches up from the bottom of the stringer but it is something that I would consider and will put it to the customer.

Chuckle.. There used to be some kind of sheet material for longer cracks that was glued in place but often the edges showed after a while so in the end I wonder if such movement is really able to be predicted and fixed. I guess you could tell him to go on a crack filling course and run it yourself!

Brian

I've never used it where it's on-show, so don't know if it looks grubby over time, but it's lived up to other claims, I'd try CT1 as a sealing bead, but not paint over it to avoid the issue of paint cracking.

In the 1930's fixing stuff to the wall meant a whole lot more than getting your electric drill out and making a few holes?

Even in the fifties it was a similar issue, our previous 1957 house had all the skirting and door cases nailed to wooden wedges inserted into chiselled out gaps in the mortar between bricks. As far as I know the staircase was only fixed to the joists. There was some evidence of an under stairs cupboard at one time removed by the previous owners which perhaps offered some additional support.

Richard

So, you'd have to put the staircase in place, mark up where the wedges would go. Take the staircase down again .... Or some bloody careful measurements. Anyway, you can see why they didn't bother. :)

GB explained :

Quite right - likely either a Rawlbit and hammer, or a star drill and hammer for a larger fixing, plus a lot of time. That persisted through to the 1960's..

Fix the beading to the wall but leave a 2mm gap between the bottom of it and the top of the stringer. Then explain to the customer that shadow gaps really are the thing to have at the moment ;) !!

flush it

The structure in the boxed in section under my stairs definitely gives much extra support. Over that past 100 years the wooden wedges holding the stairs tightly together dried out and either started dropping out or became lose. I had to get in and knock these wedges further in and provide some extra support with some thick wooden bracing.