HELP! PANICKING ABOUT CRACKS IN PLASTER

[BunnyLodge]

Hi all,

Hope someone can help and easy my worries! Basically I bought my first house last May and up to now all seems to have been fine. However I have started to notice quite a few long horizontal cracks on the walls about an inch below where it meets the ceiling and sone cracks that weave onto both. In other rooms the crack goes along the wall/ceiling join and sometimes vertically down the corners of the room. The house was built in 2001 and I am presuming that the walls are covered in plaster board or simular product. Some of the walls look like they have already been patched up in the past. I have heard that this can be commmon in new houses due to settling but I am also worried about subsidence and foundation problems.

Does anyone know much about this, is it something I should be worried about? Any help is much appeciated. (can provide pictures if neccesary, but new to the forum so don't really know how at the mo!)

Thanks in advance.

Katy

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• BunnyLodge
• 8 Mar 2009
• 1

crack by the window (vertical)

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• BunnyLodge
• 8 Mar 2009
• 1

crack on wall adjoing ceiling and partly on ceiling

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• BunnyLodge
• 8 Mar 2009
• 1

crack in the corner of the rooms, also loke this in other rooms

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• BunnyLodge
• 8 Mar 2009
• 1

cracks both verical and horizontal in corners of room

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• BunnyLodge
• 8 Mar 2009
• 1

Crack travelling vertically in middle of room

 

[roy c]

Try to get some pics up for us to look at Katy...And dont Panic......

 

[roughcaster]

If your walls/ceilings are made of plasterboard, it sounds to me as if your tapes are coming off. Rub the back of your fingernails up the affected corners, if it sounds hollow underneath, the tapes are loose. The solution is to remove the loose tapes and have new tapes fitted.

Roughcaster.

 

[BunnyLodge]

Hi,

Thanks for getting back so quickly, I think I have succesfully managed to post some images, however they are not that clear,

Thanks again

 

[Alastairreid]

or maybe the lack of tapes

 

[BunnyLodge]

Oh, not exactly sure what tapes do! Do they stick the plaster board to the wall? going to go and google it, if it is lack of tapes could this mean alot of work and potential plaster falling off?

Thanks for replying

 

[Alastairreid]

View media item 9429plasterers skrim tape used between junctions to walls ceilings and internal corners, prevents plaster cracking at these points.

 

[BunnyLodge]

Thanks so much,

That would explain alot, as it is happening in a lot of places and at those points. Not exactly sure what I am going to do next but that does ease my worries that it doesn't neccesarily mean that my house is unstable!

Hope this may help others too!

Thanks alot.

 

[NickB_99]

Did you have a survey done during the purchase process? If so, anything mentioned in it?
I moved in to a place in Sept - a little older, circa 1970s. We have similar cracks or worse, but surveyor said that the foundations in this area are clay and this can cause some cracking. The house is very sound and not to be concerned etc.
Would try not to worry

 

[roughcaster]

Now you have some pictures up, it does look a little more than just tapes coming loose. I think most of them could be due to some slight settlement/movement within the property.

Roughcaster.

 

[Joeylegend]

I am not a plaster , but i had some plastering done recently over a stud wall made up of plaster board and wood, the heat in a room can expand the wood behind the plaster board and therefore crack the plaster, so i was told by the plasterer, he said that if this happens use a product called ' fine line' finish , dont use polyfiller, i had never heard of it but in my google search i found a product that decorators use to cover up moving cracks, before painting may nip down to B&Q and see if they have this: http://www.decoratingdirect.co.uk/viewprod/t/TOUELFB/

 

[Richard C]

I am not a plaster , but i had some plastering done recently over a stud wall made up of plaster board and wood, the heat in a room can expand the wood behind the plaster board and therefore crack the plaster, so i was told by the plasterer, he said that if this happens use a product called ' fine line' finish , dont use polyfiller, i had never heard of it but in my google search i found a product that decorators use to cover up moving cracks, before painting may nip down to B&Q and see if they have this: http://www.decoratingdirect.co.uk/viewprod/t/TOUELFB/[/QUOTE]
Hmmm not sure about your plasterer; sounds like he was covering his arse to me That stuff isn’t going to repair cracks like that I'm afraid & I’m with RC; difficult to say from the pictures but there seems to be a bit more going on there!

 

[BunnyLodge]

Thanks everyone for your advice, I understand pictures can't tell everything but I really appreciate your advice. Still not quite sure what to do next. Have sort of come to the conclusion that there is movement, which is very worrying but kind of hoping that because the house is only 8 years old it might still be settling, fingers crossed anyway,

Very much regretting not getting full survey, naive first time buyer!

Thanks again.

 

[Joeylegend]

Hi Richard,

Good to hear from you again,what would this section do without you.

I have a few hair line cracks where the join of the stud wall meets the solid block wall, my wife painted the wall yesterday and the cracks ( maybe for the min) dissappeared into the paint. Maybe not as serious as out friends above, but still it anoyed me when they appeared right around the whole outline of the door opening.

 

[Richard C]

I have a few hair line cracks where the join of the stud wall meets the solid block wall, my wife painted the wall yesterday and the cracks ( maybe for the min) dissappeared into the paint.

It can always be a problem where stud meets block & it is caused by differential expansion between the different materials but you shouldn’t get problems with cracking between the boards on the studwork itself; it can happen if the timber used for the studwork was wet or the studwork itself isn’t particularly well built. Once the cracks are there, they will usually always reappear unless you take further action to reinforce them; probably best to live with it if not too bad.

Maybe not as serious as out friends above, but still it anoyed me when they appeared right around the whole outline of the door opening.

If I’m doing work for me or my own, I prefer to block up old openings rather than stud & board them out; slightly more work but less chance of cracking around the opening but it can still happen, even with blocks! A trick that can be very successful if the base plaster on the surrounding wall is thick enough is to remove 2-300mm of the plaster back to the blocks all around the door opening & fit the boards so they overlap the surrounding wall rather than just boarding out the opening itself; screw to the studwork & D&D onto the wall. Also works when extending existing block walls with a new stud wall.