Cracked render... how bad?

calum

Ok, I know the only way to get a definitive answer on this is to have somebody qualified take a look at it, but would be interested to hear your thoughts anyway

House we're interested in buying is a new build, but still went up about 12-18 months ago. Crack in render (see attached photo) runs from the point where the master bedroom balcony handrail joins the wall, up to the roof.

The balcony itself doesn't protrude beyond the outer wall of the storey below at any point, and there's no evidence of cracking or damp on the interior wall behind the crack.

Any opinions as to whether it looks/sounds more likely to be structural than superficial?

Borzoi

calum wrote: »

Ok, I know the only way to get a definitive answer on this is to have somebody qualified take a look at it, but would be interested to hear your thoughts anyway

Any opinions as to whether it looks/sounds more likely to be structural than superficial?

The old rule of thumb was if you could get fingers in it was an issue - but that's for old houses! That crack is more than a hairline - would definitely need to be professsionally assessed. What is 2-3mm after 18months could be a lot more after 36!

mad m

Is it just me but when you look at pic on right hand side was there something heavy attached to wall, looks like old drill holes? Water would get into a crack like that no problem and if you had a bad winter it would expand crack even worse. Are you positive no cracks are appearing on interior wall? hairline maybe? Hit interior wall with back of knuckle to see if its sounds hollow. Could be the weight of roof putting pressure in that spot....Would definitly get it checked out though by an engineer.

calum

Thanks for thoughts so far. Thing that strikes me visually about the crack is that it's barely a hairline right where the balcony railings join the wall, getting substantially wider as it heads towards the roof.

As somebody with no construction experience whatsoever, I'd have intuitively expected the thin end to indicate where the problem had started, spreading out as it moved away from the source... as if, I dunno, they'd originally just cracked the render by screwing the railings into the wall a bit too hard or something, and then it had just worsened over time.

Or is that just completely unlikely?! (It does sound a bit back to front now that I think about how a crack would form if I dropped a rock onto some ice or something...)

sinnerboy

That's not simply a crack in render - It looks to me like the roof is not braced properly at wall plate level at the corner . So the thrust of the roof is pushing out the wall there . Get a structural engineer to make a close inspection . Ask him to wear old clothes and bring a torch

calum

So, just to close out this thread (hopefully), we had an engineer in to have a look today... and after inspecting it from all angles, he didn't find any evidence of anything other than shrinking/settling.

He did say himself that it looked a lot worse in the photo... in fact the crack is only a couple of feet long, and the walls are still dead square, whereas in the photo it looks more like four feet and the walls seem to be bowed slightly.

(Oh, and the marks beside the crack are just that-- superficial marks, not holes...)

sinnerboy

Very pleased to hear that calum

AMIIAM

If in doubt, leave the cracked house out!