Cracks appearing everywhere in house

jmc19

Can anyone tell me what sort of problem I have going on, I have an engineer coming in a few days and just wanted to see what someone else has to say first.

My house is ten years old and over the last few months cracks have started to appear everywhere. Walls are coming away from the ceilings both downstairs and upstairs, cracks spreading out from corners of window frames and doors, cracks in centre above door frames of ground floor, staircase has dropped, fitted wardrobes have dropped from ceilings, cracks down internal walls in corners and some walls with horizontal cracks, floors dropping from skirting on ground floor, floors upstairs making banging and creaking noises when you walk on them, also cracking outside around base of house.

Thanks in advance

muffler

You are better waiting for your engineer to look at it.

Any opinion offered here would be purely guesswork and I wouldnt want you to be given false hope or indeed an opinion that may have you evacuating your house overnight.

From what you have described it doesnt sound good but your engineer will confirm the exact problem and how to rectify it.

jmc19

muffler wrote: »

Any opinion offered here would be purely guesswork and I wouldnt want you to be given false hope or indeed an opinion that may have you evacuating your house overnight.

From what you have described it doesnt sound good but your engineer will confirm the exact problem and how to rectify it.

I understand, my reason for asking is that I've already been onto the people that own the house (I'm renting and I'm living in the house since it was built), they sent their engineer out and he said that there was nothing to worry about and that someone would be out over the coming weeks to fill the cracks. Now I'm no builder, but this doen't sound right to me, especially after he only done a ten minute walk around the house and didn't even measure a crack, hence the reason why I'm getting my own engineer in and according to him it sound likes I'm been fobbed off.

Kashkai

If it's not your house, why worry? You are in a position to walk away from it if it is causing you alarm. My own house is also showing a lot of cracks similar to yours. I have a theory that they may partly be caused by the recent cold snap where the cold caused the house to contract and the heating made it expand and thus the plaster cracked in places. Settlement would also cause floors and wardrobes to drop which is normal in new builds but if your place is 10 years old, this should have happened long ago.

seclachi

Its sounds like you are doing your landlord a service. If they are as uninterested in his property as it seems they are then you`ll probably have a job to convince them to repair it. I think the best course might have been to ask your landlord to get the other engineer for a second opnion or up sticks.

It could be related to the cold snap, just a guess, but judging by what its done to alot of roads its not hard to imagine it causing settlement..

jmc19

Prosperous Dave wrote: »

If it's not your house, why worry? You are in a position to walk away from it if it is causing you alarm.

True, but I like where I'm living. I've always paid my rent on time so I don't see whay I should have to move, I'm not responsible for the structure.

seclachi wrote: »

Its sounds like you are doing your landlord a service. If they are as uninterested in his property as it seems they are then you`ll probably have a job to convince them to repair it. I think the best course might have been to ask your landlord to get the other engineer for a second opnion or up sticks.

I already said it to them and they said that their own engineer was more than qualified and that they are taking his word on things and that I've nothing to worry about. They didn't seem too happy when I told them I was getting a report done myself.