Should I worry about these cracks?

RainbowLaura

Hi everyone,

I've recently noticed that three of my internal doors have cracks next to them, which are visible both sides of the wall... All three (or six) cracks look pretty much the same and are in the same position on each door, like this:



I have a 17 year old three storey house, and one of the affected doors is on the top floor and the other two are on the middle floor. All three doors are on walls facing the same way, but I'm not sure whether they are load bearing or not. They are actually almost the opposite of cracks and have no width to them at all; when I run my finger over them they actually feel slightly raised, more like a compression of some sort than a gap/crack... None of the doors have problems with sticking or anything like that. The walls are plasterboard and we've not had any significant work done to the house. The house is on clay soil...

Should I be concerned, and do I need to contact a structural engineer or similar?

Edit to add that the "cracks" look slightly worse in real life than they do in the pic.

magn8p

If it's a 17 year old house, it's probably a stud wall finished with a plasterboard on top. Can you confirm that?

RainbowLaura wrote: »

Hi everyone,

I've recently noticed that three of my internal doors have cracks next to them, which are visible both sides of the wall... All three (or six) cracks look pretty much the same and are in the same position on each door, like this:



I have a 17 year old three storey house, and one of the affected doors is on the top floor and the other two are on the middle floor. All three doors are on walls facing the same way, but I'm not sure whether they are load bearing or not. They are actually almost the opposite of cracks and have no width to them at all; when I run my finger over them they actually feel slightly raised, more like a compression of some sort than a gap/crack... None of the doors have problems with sticking or anything like that. The walls are plasterboard. The house is on clay soil...

Should I be concerned, and do I need to contact a structural engineer or similar?

Edit to add that the "cracks" look slightly worse in real life than they do in the pic.

RainbowLaura

magn8p wrote: »

If it's a 17 year old house, it's probably a stud wall finished with a plasterboard on top. Can you confirm that?

That's correct yes.

magn8p

In that case, I don't think you should be worried as it is most probably a cosmetic wear out - perhaps down to the operation of the heavy door that attached to the door frame.

Its definitely not a structural issue either. I think you can simply scrub the cracks, put a tape and plaster on top to hide it.

There are other experts on this forum who will add their views along with ways to fix it.

All the best.

RainbowLaura wrote: »

That's correct yes.

RainbowLaura

magn8p wrote: »

In that case, I don't think you should be worried as it is most probably a cosmetic wear out - perhaps down to the operation of the heavy door that attached to the door frame.

Its definitely not a structural issue either. I think you can simply scrub the cracks, put a tape and plaster on top to hide it.

There are other experts on this forum who will add their views along with ways to fix it.

All the best.

I can't tell you how reassured I am by that, thanks so much! It does make sense as our doors are the very heavy fire resistant type (and may have been slammed once or twice!)