Sorry for the long post - I'm having terrible anxiety! My husband and I just bought a house. We are first time homeowners and really don't know what is "normal" or not.
Our home was built in 1932. So not the oldest of the old, but... old. New roof, new electric. It has a clay brick foundation. We had a home inspection done before we purchased (of course) and we chose an inspector who is also a structural engineer - we just hired him for the inspection, though.
The basement has a vertical crack which the inspection report records as "not excessive at this time, but consider steps to minimize moisture." He told us that clay brick foundations tend to have a lot of moisture on them, it's the nature of the beast. He also did our radon test and when he came back to collect the radon results, there was a small puddle in the basement. He said we might consider waterproofing.
We asked him if we needed to get a structural certification (which we would have contracted from him, obviously) and his answer was an emphatic NO. He explained it was not an emergency but we would eventually get tired of cleaning up after big storms.
We've been here three weeks and had about several heavy storms. Only once have we had a puddle in the basement.
But all of a sudden I am noticing lots of cracks in the walls and even one that extends onto the ceiling. They are all hairline cracks, none really more than 1/8 of an inch. Most of them are near doorways, windows, and one is over our built-in china cabinet. The one on the ceiling seems to be getting longer, but it's still skinny as can be.
My husband is not nearly concerned as I am, he says it's an 80 year old house and it's probably full of small cracks that will open and close. He fully trusts our inspector's judgment since he IS an engineer. We didn't notice any of these little cracks before, though, and they aren't written up in the inspection report. The house was recently painted when we looked at it, could it have concealed the cracks? On some of the doors you can tell where they were planed in order to get them to stop sticking.
We have a guy coming out next week to give us an estimate on waterproofing (he has an extremely good reputation, does not advertise, word of mouth referrals only). What do people think about these cracks? Normal or signs of impending doom?
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Our home was built in 1932. So not the oldest of the old, but... old. New roof, new electric. It has a clay brick foundation. We had a home inspection done before we purchased (of course) and we chose an inspector who is also a structural engineer - we just hired him for the inspection, though.
The basement has a vertical crack which the inspection report records as "not excessive at this time, but consider steps to minimize moisture." He told us that clay brick foundations tend to have a lot of moisture on them, it's the nature of the beast. He also did our radon test and when he came back to collect the radon results, there was a small puddle in the basement. He said we might consider waterproofing.
We asked him if we needed to get a structural certification (which we would have contracted from him, obviously) and his answer was an emphatic NO. He explained it was not an emergency but we would eventually get tired of cleaning up after big storms.
We've been here three weeks and had about several heavy storms. Only once have we had a puddle in the basement.
But all of a sudden I am noticing lots of cracks in the walls and even one that extends onto the ceiling. They are all hairline cracks, none really more than 1/8 of an inch. Most of them are near doorways, windows, and one is over our built-in china cabinet. The one on the ceiling seems to be getting longer, but it's still skinny as can be.
My husband is not nearly concerned as I am, he says it's an 80 year old house and it's probably full of small cracks that will open and close. He fully trusts our inspector's judgment since he IS an engineer. We didn't notice any of these little cracks before, though, and they aren't written up in the inspection report. The house was recently painted when we looked at it, could it have concealed the cracks? On some of the doors you can tell where they were planed in order to get them to stop sticking.
We have a guy coming out next week to give us an estimate on waterproofing (he has an extremely good reputation, does not advertise, word of mouth referrals only). What do people think about these cracks? Normal or signs of impending doom?
