Fount Cracks in Walls and Solid Floor

millym

My sister was the first person to move into a 3 storey block of new flats, about 10 years ago. She kept hearing loud cracks and bangs at all hours, even though the building was otherwise empty, and found cracks in the walls like you describe. Turns out it was only the building settling! Sounded more like it was about to fall down.

Workmen were round and filled it all when it was a year old, and there has been no problems since.

joebloggs09

Ladybird20 wrote: »

Well its either that the plaster is drying out and thats why you are geting cracks which is normal..OR.....its something quite serious like mine was......:eek::eek:..which was i noticed cracks appearing downstairs in the corner were the living room dinning room ,kitchen hallway meets ...On getting the NHBC out , it became apparant that no foundations had been put under a load bearing wall:eek:.....that was 2yrs ago,,it has since been repaired with 11 pile foundations as part of the repair, i did also employ my own structural engineer to over see the repair which was probably the best money i had spent in a while..2yrs on not even a hair line crack has surfaced...good luck with your property.....If unsure and you think builder is fobbing you off, get an structural engineer in like i did,worth there weight in gold.......;)

Can I please ask the cost of the engineer or did this come out of your insurance sorry to sound cheeky

Ladybird20

joebloggs09 wrote: »

Can I please ask the cost of the engineer or did this come out of your insurance sorry to sound cheeky

I paid for the engineer myself,,he did a fabulous job and i felt he took the stress out of the whole nightmare.He went to check at crucial points that everything was being done correctly.

Doozergirl

joebloggs09 wrote: »

Hi

Not massive but not great the floor cracks belly up if you get my meaning , the surveyor stated he thought there would be two layers of concrete , a 3inch layer of concrete then the top one that would be 6" thick that has cracked.

It's the other way round. The screed layer is on the top and is much thinner than the foundation slab. If it's fine cracks in the screed then it probably just dried out a bit too quickly or the mix wasn't perfect. It's highly unlikely that the floor slab would crack without much more evidence shown in the walls.

How old is this house? It's not old if it has a concrete floor?

A crack that you can only put a piece of paper into that you only found when decorating that is not mirrored outside is not a concern. Keep an eye on them but I wouldn't bat an eyelid and would treat them as cosmetic.

All houses move; don't ever expect to find a house without some sort of crack somewhere.

Doozergirl

joebloggs09 wrote: »

Can I please ask the cost of the engineer or did this come out of your insurance sorry to sound cheeky

Be very careful here as if you start trying to monitor the house then your insurance company are going to be very wary of you as a potential claimant.

You wouldn't really even start to consider monitoring cracks until you could fit a £1 coin in the crack. If you want to do our own short term monitoring, then mark the ends of the cracks with a pencil and date it. If they are growing then the cracks will move past your pencil mark. Even if they grow a little bit it's not conclusive of anything.

You have alreay had a professional surveyor look at them twice. If he thought they needed monitoring, he would have told you.