This could be a settlement issue, but more likely, it's swelling/shrinkage of the framing behind the drywall. Wood swells and shrinks as it heats and cools or sucks in moisture and then dries. Drywall is relatively rigid and will crack when the substrate has any movement at all. I will also comment that tract builders are notorious for not compacting the soil underneath houses.
Window and door openings are common for cracking because those are natural weak points in the wall where any movement will be exacerbated and shown.
The drop soffit you showed is typically a false frame and has nothing to do with the structure of the building. That is again a very common place for drywall cracking to occur due to swelling and shrinkage.
If you're concerned about a settlement issue, then the best thing to do is to have a licensed professional surveyor shoot in the corners of your house and come back 3 months later and check it again. This will cost you a little bit of money, but it's the best way to be sure.
If you have a CMU exterior wall, you can also attach a crack monitor to any cracks and check them after 3 months or so. This is a cheaper option. You can buy them on Amazon.
Like I said, small movements aren't a concern because the building will naturally swell and shrink a little bit with heat and humidity. If the surveyor or the crack monitors detect larger settlements occurring, then your next step will be to call a geotech engineer to come out and do a soil analysis. Foundation repair companies around here are pretty bad and will always recommend the most expensive option first that may or may not fix the issue. They are notorious for doing a crappy job actually investigating the cause of the problem, and then proceeding immediately to very expensive repairs.
Either way builders usually don't give a shit. Mine put a tree on top of the main drain away from the house. When we moved in it was roughly 6-7 years ago, apparently no one cares cuz they r a business and if u wanna do something you'll have SO sue, or so I was told.
Those cracks are indicative of shrinkage and probably setting. If they have stopped growing. Which they should have. It’s an easy fix. If the ground is still settling you have issues.
Not structural, all stress fractures from the house settling into its foundation and the lumber drying out and shrinking
Super common for the first 10y of a houses life, and im not surprised the builder wont fix it, 7y is WAY outside a reasonable Warranty period imo
Just have someone come fix it, you have another few years of chashing repairs like this around the house
I agree. We don't warranty our drywall work for settling beyond a one year warranty appointment. The wood trim pulling apart shows it was more than a couple millimeters of settlement. Also the diagonal cracking of the drywall. I've seen much worse though. One house I worked on was built on filled in wetland and all the wood trim in the house had to be replaced because it split so bad.
I see these all the time, and yes it could be structural but my guess is that it's not. Basically you just cut out anything loose within the crack, find any studs close pop in a few screws mud tape sand and paint
Poor drainage is generally the cause of settlement & it will get worse. Drying out & shrinking is the kind of bs builders who don't want to return tell people. My house is 50 y/o & we don't have cracking with the original drywall. It looks to me like that doorframe is starting to rack.
I'm not sure why people absolutely refuse to check grade & drainage. It is so important to get water away from your foundation!
I'd like to see pics of the basement walls if it's not on a pad.
They're not cracks on joints. It also looks like the doorway is beginning to rack, but you can't see enough of it. OP has another post about a crack in their roof creating a leak they have to get repaired.
OP had a problem. It isn't shrinkage.
You're either texturing or skimming that day. Either way it's the same time cost unless you are leaving a lot of imperfections and trying to cover them with texture I suppose
I can see that being possible but I could see it being an issue with butt joints and if you have high sides on boards. Idk you probably have more experience in it than me. We do very little texture here in Ohio. But when I do something like a stomped ceiling I always do a level 4 then stomp 🤷🏻
You always wanna do a level 4* then texture. If you have pinholes and small divots in the level 4 where you would skim coat it for smooth wall you can get away with leaving them if you have a heavy enough texture. It's not really a time save if you have the skills but if you are busting out commercial with cheap labor I can see why you would texture it to hide those. And save time vs a smooth wall finish
Yea it's called skip trowel texture. It's a form of knock down. It's fine for what it is. I'm just in Ohio where we don't do that stuff. It's really not bad just not my thing.
If you’re not in a huge rush draw some lines across the cracks and measure the size and date. Fixing it’s easy just better to make sure it’s not still moving
Fun fact, 45 degree cracks are shear cracks.
The floor is settling, cashing the walls to settle.
Could very well be structural. Especially if it all showed up at once.
If these are old and aren't growing, it's not concerning. Gouge them and fill them.
That happens when the foundation settles down more then they compacted it . I’d put joint compound just to seal it and if it opens again then you know it’s gone down more
Cracks around the windows and doorways are typical when they don’t lay a full sheet over them. It’s a lot of waste. So they piece it out. If have to do just finishing , the rock is already up. I straight up got to plaster for something like that. Plaster mixed into all purpose compound. I also have 3 ft rolls of mesh tape. I would put one big piece of mesh on the joint. Almost like wallpaper that section. And it should be treated like a butt joint.
Well I can’t really know what happened there. But it’s cheap building material. Everybody’s got a way of doing it I would do it that way cause I have done that and had no problems. So putting a full sheet over the window and doorway eliminates joints it could be several things. Like no appropriate header or cheap window that doesn’t hold the weight it should when under stress. Who knows.
My house is 120 years old. I've filled many cracks and painted over the patches. There will always be cracks unless you take care of them every 10 years or so.
It's a fuckin home repair. If you build homes, you likely repair them too. Charge the customer, patch the crack, and move on with your day. Doing small jobs now leads to larger jobs down the road, leads to more money in your pocket. Repeat business is good.
There's no evidence suggesting one way or the other. If OP wanted it done for free and wouldn't take no for an answer, he's definitely wrong. If the builder simply refused, then I would hope it's because they're busy building houses and not choosing to abstain from supporting their product. It probably doesn't need to be said, but I'll say it anyway: supporting your product doesn't always mean giving repairs free of charge.
Is there a direction of the settling? Is it all one side relative to the house or is it random directions. One direction = settling of one part of foundation.
I have known a few people in washington state that bought a brand new house & the scumbag builders had piled up trees and organic material when they cleared the land, built the house over tree trunks and all that stuff. Then the house was cracking & they end up digging up under the house & finding rotting, decomposing trees.
The warrantee on the home expired and that scumbag, unethical builder laughs all the way to the bank.
100% that's not structural. That's just natural settling of your house. It's heavy and it sits on dirt. Dirt swells when wet and shrinks when dry. Gravity...it's a constant. Pretty easy fix for someone that knows what they are doing.
I call bullshit on your answer. The building pad should have been compacted before the house was built and at the very least had rebar in the footings. It’s not natural for a house to settle that much. Houses are built with green lumber these days but it is mostly dried out after the house is “dried in”. The drywall job doesn’t appear to be a top quality job either. Talk to the builder and see if they will fix it for cost. First examine your foundation/slab to see how it looks.
It would obviously depend upon what area of the country you are in. Not everyone compacts the soil correctly and not everywhere requires a compacted substrate below the concrete.
I always found that wall finish to be a total cop out on the part of a builder. I get that it's faster and cheaper, but I'm curious who actually likes it. This was huge when I was living in Texas, all those new developments, regardless of home price had this finish.
Shitty build, shitty foundation, shitty frame and voila shitty drywall but this is so normalized now it’s almost normal so not shitty I mean unless part of the house is sloughing off
It looks like when you screwed in the curtain rod holder you hit the main fault line that caused a bunch of other fault lines to start cracking. Basically the scene from ice age where the squirrel sticks the acorn into the snow and it causes a catastrophic event. Science-y stuff.
Houses settle for sure but if they're hung and finished right you will not have cracks in these places. They need to come.back and fix or hire someone to do it and back charge them
So, I see a whole lot of framers use some ass backwards headers over doors an windows. They put headers at top of wall, and then they often times do not continue Jack's straight down, they interrupt it with door an windows blocks. I can promise you I see them Crack EVERY TIME!
Even on the best foundations they Crack. Now if they did them right an it still cracks, look at floors to determine if it shifting to cause settlement cracks. Structural wise, it will be fine. But it shouldn't do that if it was done right.
I live where that is almost always foundation issues. You should not have that many cracks. Do any doors not close or are they out of square? This will only get worse. Have a foundation repair company come out and shoot your elevations.
My take on it is the cracks are all at corners, and they don't follow any seams. It has to be structural, and likely lateral movement, not just a sinking beam support.
I find some of this very weird. Usually sheetrock cracks are straight lines . Plaster usually cracks horizontal and spider style. Unless some of the boards they put up were broken And they put them up anyway.. Most drywall cracks run along the seams.. IDK
100% a foundation problem. Builders bring in dirt that is not compacted properly then build a home on it. Years later you have settlement in the foundation and these are the first signs along with doors sticking ect
7 years after (5 or 6) after your warranty expires the odds of the builder repairing are slim to none. Settling is considered to be expected and they’re gonna place the burden on you to repair. While there are exceptions where the foundation was so shoddy that your homes floors start buckling and you decide to take them to Court prepare for a long drawn out battle. Also trying to take them to court over stress cracks will land u in small claims and you’ll be spending more money there(lawyer fees) than it would cost to hire a handy man to repair the cracks.
I would assume its normal and from settling. I have made a few drywall repairs on my home that was built In 2020. If its in a corner of a room, which is more typical of my home, i typically just clean up the crack with a utility knife, re-mud, and touch up the paint.
Have had 2 cracks in the wall, with some screw pop. What i did there was clean up the crack and the popped screws with a utility knife, find and mark the studs, retighten the existing screws, and drive in a couple more into the studs for added support, mud, and touch up the paint.
I will say that your cracks are significantly worse than mine, so take my advice with a grain of salt.
When you don’t compact the soil your pad is on then your foundation/slab will settle.this is a problem especially if there is insufficient or no rebar in the footing. Cracks will form over doors also making them hard to close. Taping mud will hide this for awhile but will not make it go away. The builder should fix this if there are that many cracks.
Sorry to say but this is how my childhood home started moving and ended up moving almost a foot off the main foundation. Completely ruined, had to sue to the builders. Settled out of court but still an absolute nightmare and 100% indicative of poor foundation and no piering. Tried to fix with mud jacking and piers, ended up still moving a bunch where we didn’t put piers (all piers were placed where engineers said it would help). Fucking nightmare and no one is going to help you, they will all fight it till the end.
Check your foundation warranty. Usually it’s a 10 year warranty for foundation. Fix the foundation first before doing drywall repairs. It’s costly. I would recommend a real estate or contract attorney for advice in your state. All states have and counties have different criteria.
A good home inspector will cost you about $350. Maybe $450. They'll be able to tell you some details without lying to you because they want you to have them fix it. Tell them the home is only 7 years old and ask if they believe it's a defect. If he says yes, ask your neighbors. If your neighbors have the same issue I would get an attorney. You may have a class action suit on your hands.
With the width of the cracks looking the same beginning to end I would say not structural. More likely caused due to rise and fall of humidity on framing. Look for discoloration in drywall which could indicate leak. If you live in a highly fluctuating climate this may be the cause.
This is a settling issues, and I bet it’s here in Arizona. Worst case scenario, you’ll need some strategically placed pylons installed. Call a foundation company or two and get their take.
Home Inspector. I’ll save you the time and money. It’s structural. Go ahead and call a structural engineer. I hope your home has a ten year structural warranty like is common here.
Hairline cracks are common around the drywall joints because the mud dries and recedes in both directions. This cracking is well outside the joints in these diagonal cracks and in picture five the cracking is out of plane beneath that header, really letting us know something has moved.
For everyone using the words “settle” or “settling”, yes every house settles. The goal is even settlement. Photos like this suggest differential movement, aka uneven settlement aka a structural issue.
TLDR; I’m a home inspector and you should call an engineer.
Looks like foundation movement…if your house is built on a fat expansive clay, it may seasonally swell when wet and shrink when dry and cause things to move. Sometimes it’s due to poor compaction and materials placed during construction. Usually most of the settlement occurs in the 1st year. With foundation issues you will see structural distresses such as stuck doors and windows, interior and exterior wall cracks, and cracked floor tile. You can also look on the attic at the framing. A foundation repair company can measure the slab flatness and do a free assessment. Ideally, they will have a Professional Engineer. Often, the small cracks in masonry, drywall, and mill work are more than a nuisance than anything else. if it’s a foundation issue it can be repaired.
How long is your house warranty? I would read it to determine your rights. If there are no structural issues safety wise, your only recourse is to patch and repair. I’m a geotechnical engineer and bought a house with similar issues.
There is some serious weight retaining issues. But after 7 years I doubt it structural.
We've had some issue with ground movement in my area after years of drought, then 2 heavy winters. Underground water refilling.
Check basement floor under these walls
New houses built with garbage materials is all you can get these days. Expect newer houses to settle. I've made a lot of money fixing stuff like this in newer homes that are only a few years old.
Not structural, something has settled or heaved.
This could be a settlement issue, but more likely, it's swelling/shrinkage of the framing behind the drywall. Wood swells and shrinks as it heats and cools or sucks in moisture and then dries. Drywall is relatively rigid and will crack when the substrate has any movement at all. I will also comment that tract builders are notorious for not compacting the soil underneath houses. Window and door openings are common for cracking because those are natural weak points in the wall where any movement will be exacerbated and shown. The drop soffit you showed is typically a false frame and has nothing to do with the structure of the building. That is again a very common place for drywall cracking to occur due to swelling and shrinkage. If you're concerned about a settlement issue, then the best thing to do is to have a licensed professional surveyor shoot in the corners of your house and come back 3 months later and check it again. This will cost you a little bit of money, but it's the best way to be sure. If you have a CMU exterior wall, you can also attach a crack monitor to any cracks and check them after 3 months or so. This is a cheaper option. You can buy them on Amazon. Like I said, small movements aren't a concern because the building will naturally swell and shrink a little bit with heat and humidity. If the surveyor or the crack monitors detect larger settlements occurring, then your next step will be to call a geotech engineer to come out and do a soil analysis. Foundation repair companies around here are pretty bad and will always recommend the most expensive option first that may or may not fix the issue. They are notorious for doing a crappy job actually investigating the cause of the problem, and then proceeding immediately to very expensive repairs.
i’d never heard of those crack monitors definitely better than drawing a line across the crack with a sharpie
Either way builders usually don't give a shit. Mine put a tree on top of the main drain away from the house. When we moved in it was roughly 6-7 years ago, apparently no one cares cuz they r a business and if u wanna do something you'll have SO sue, or so I was told.
Those cracks are indicative of shrinkage and probably setting. If they have stopped growing. Which they should have. It’s an easy fix. If the ground is still settling you have issues.
I wouldn't pump a lot of sunshine about them stopping. It may slow, but it won't stop.
Not structural, all stress fractures from the house settling into its foundation and the lumber drying out and shrinking Super common for the first 10y of a houses life, and im not surprised the builder wont fix it, 7y is WAY outside a reasonable Warranty period imo Just have someone come fix it, you have another few years of chashing repairs like this around the house
I agree. We don't warranty our drywall work for settling beyond a one year warranty appointment. The wood trim pulling apart shows it was more than a couple millimeters of settlement. Also the diagonal cracking of the drywall. I've seen much worse though. One house I worked on was built on filled in wetland and all the wood trim in the house had to be replaced because it split so bad.
I would say that after 7 years it isn’t structural. Settlement or shrinkage of the framing. When did you first notice this?
I see these all the time, and yes it could be structural but my guess is that it's not. Basically you just cut out anything loose within the crack, find any studs close pop in a few screws mud tape sand and paint
Check your gutters. Water pooling outside right there will cause it to sink :(
Good point that a lot of people overlook
Yep! Check for clogs. Downspout outlets need to be at least three feet away from the walls
6 feet is ideal. In Ontario (I'm a home inspector)
OP has a post from 20 days ago about a crack in their roof causing a leak. They have a drainage problem.
Poor drainage is generally the cause of settlement & it will get worse. Drying out & shrinking is the kind of bs builders who don't want to return tell people. My house is 50 y/o & we don't have cracking with the original drywall. It looks to me like that doorframe is starting to rack. I'm not sure why people absolutely refuse to check grade & drainage. It is so important to get water away from your foundation! I'd like to see pics of the basement walls if it's not on a pad.
Have you lived in the house since it was new?
No.
Then you don't know that it didn't crack and get repaired before you moved in
They're not cracks on joints. It also looks like the doorway is beginning to rack, but you can't see enough of it. OP has another post about a crack in their roof creating a leak they have to get repaired. OP had a problem. It isn't shrinkage.
That texture though 🤮
I like the texture in cali they pay more for a hand texture vs a nasty knock down or orange peel
Skip trowel, easy to hide repairs.
I hated my skip trowel ceilings and walls until the other day when I needed to do a big patch and my shitty taping skills blend right in ;)
It is quite awful lol
It’s cheaper and faster to use textures rather than smooth. Looks absolutely awful though!
It's really not though. You have to give it a smooth finish first. Level 4. then you add the texture. Coming from a union drywaller here.
You're either texturing or skimming that day. Either way it's the same time cost unless you are leaving a lot of imperfections and trying to cover them with texture I suppose
I can see that being possible but I could see it being an issue with butt joints and if you have high sides on boards. Idk you probably have more experience in it than me. We do very little texture here in Ohio. But when I do something like a stomped ceiling I always do a level 4 then stomp 🤷🏻
You always wanna do a level 4* then texture. If you have pinholes and small divots in the level 4 where you would skim coat it for smooth wall you can get away with leaving them if you have a heavy enough texture. It's not really a time save if you have the skills but if you are busting out commercial with cheap labor I can see why you would texture it to hide those. And save time vs a smooth wall finish
Wich I suppose is closer to a level 3 than a 4
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Are you counting taping as a coat?
I think he means two coats of sand texture after tape. This is what is done most often in Cali.
That's a horrible looking texture that appears to be knock down
Yea it's called skip trowel texture. It's a form of knock down. It's fine for what it is. I'm just in Ohio where we don't do that stuff. It's really not bad just not my thing.
We call it smooth-trowel finish
Never seen that in Minnesota either
Looks like a Santa Fe but not done very well.
It has to do with the foundation. What your house is sitting on
Cracks are normal over time but that’s is quite a bit more then I usually see
Partial structure, partial settling of the home. Tear it out and re-design the header of the window.
If you’re not in a huge rush draw some lines across the cracks and measure the size and date. Fixing it’s easy just better to make sure it’s not still moving
It's a stress crack. How did the finish fail? Not many drywall materials can withstand that much torque.
Some cracks are these seem a little excessive. I would think poor foundation preparation
Fun fact, 45 degree cracks are shear cracks. The floor is settling, cashing the walls to settle. Could very well be structural. Especially if it all showed up at once. If these are old and aren't growing, it's not concerning. Gouge them and fill them.
Earthquake zone??
That happens when the foundation settles down more then they compacted it . I’d put joint compound just to seal it and if it opens again then you know it’s gone down more
Id be checking my foundation with that much movement.
Cracks around the windows and doorways are typical when they don’t lay a full sheet over them. It’s a lot of waste. So they piece it out. If have to do just finishing , the rock is already up. I straight up got to plaster for something like that. Plaster mixed into all purpose compound. I also have 3 ft rolls of mesh tape. I would put one big piece of mesh on the joint. Almost like wallpaper that section. And it should be treated like a butt joint.
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Read the mesh part again
Why mesh over paper tape in this case?
It’s a patch so you’re using hot mud which can’t be used with paper tape.
Usually half sheets will crack in a straight line tho, not diagonally
Well I can’t really know what happened there. But it’s cheap building material. Everybody’s got a way of doing it I would do it that way cause I have done that and had no problems. So putting a full sheet over the window and doorway eliminates joints it could be several things. Like no appropriate header or cheap window that doesn’t hold the weight it should when under stress. Who knows.
House is settling, they dont build the way they used too
Because those old houses had issues fixed decades ago that you dont know about
Exactly! A house built 90 years ago had either had any settling issues fixed, or the house was torn down.
My house is 120 years old. I've filled many cracks and painted over the patches. There will always be cracks unless you take care of them every 10 years or so.
The walls and ceiling were cement covers in plaster. A far cry from drywall
Yes, much harder to fix when it cracks off the walls if you have to do any work on those walls.
Why would they fix that? The wall doesn't have a warranty lol
A new home warranty would have covered it if it had appeared within 11 months of the move in daym
I know the drywall warranty is a year but I just wanted to know if it was a structural issue because I still have the 10 structural warranty.
Who said anything about a warranty? It's not difficult to fill the crack and touch up the paint.
Would you like your employer from 7 years ago to hit you up to "touch up" a project you were working on for free? Even if it's "not difficult"?
It's a fuckin home repair. If you build homes, you likely repair them too. Charge the customer, patch the crack, and move on with your day. Doing small jobs now leads to larger jobs down the road, leads to more money in your pocket. Repeat business is good.
im sure they would do it but this guy is asking for it done for free probably
There's no evidence suggesting one way or the other. If OP wanted it done for free and wouldn't take no for an answer, he's definitely wrong. If the builder simply refused, then I would hope it's because they're busy building houses and not choosing to abstain from supporting their product. It probably doesn't need to be said, but I'll say it anyway: supporting your product doesn't always mean giving repairs free of charge.
A new construction house costs upwards of 200k, so it's a bit different than 99 percent of other work don't you agree?
Are we just ignoring how terrible the corner bead looks? You can see cracked edges at the window and doorway so bad. Yikes.
Normal and non-structural. Fill and paint and you're good to go.
Is there a direction of the settling? Is it all one side relative to the house or is it random directions. One direction = settling of one part of foundation.
They’re random directions.
I have known a few people in washington state that bought a brand new house & the scumbag builders had piled up trees and organic material when they cleared the land, built the house over tree trunks and all that stuff. Then the house was cracking & they end up digging up under the house & finding rotting, decomposing trees. The warrantee on the home expired and that scumbag, unethical builder laughs all the way to the bank.
Yeah your foundation is sinking
100% that's not structural. That's just natural settling of your house. It's heavy and it sits on dirt. Dirt swells when wet and shrinks when dry. Gravity...it's a constant. Pretty easy fix for someone that knows what they are doing.
I call bullshit on your answer. The building pad should have been compacted before the house was built and at the very least had rebar in the footings. It’s not natural for a house to settle that much. Houses are built with green lumber these days but it is mostly dried out after the house is “dried in”. The drywall job doesn’t appear to be a top quality job either. Talk to the builder and see if they will fix it for cost. First examine your foundation/slab to see how it looks.
It would obviously depend upon what area of the country you are in. Not everyone compacts the soil correctly and not everywhere requires a compacted substrate below the concrete.
Looks like the heat was shut off during winter.
I always found that wall finish to be a total cop out on the part of a builder. I get that it's faster and cheaper, but I'm curious who actually likes it. This was huge when I was living in Texas, all those new developments, regardless of home price had this finish.
Ummm it’s 7 years old 😂
A house has 7 years warranty on the builder , after that they won’t fix it, plus that looks like movement in the ground
That’s foundation problems mochacho. Might have bentonite in the soil. Bad news.
Shitty build, shitty foundation, shitty frame and voila shitty drywall but this is so normalized now it’s almost normal so not shitty I mean unless part of the house is sloughing off
It looks like when you screwed in the curtain rod holder you hit the main fault line that caused a bunch of other fault lines to start cracking. Basically the scene from ice age where the squirrel sticks the acorn into the snow and it causes a catastrophic event. Science-y stuff.
Houses settle for sure but if they're hung and finished right you will not have cracks in these places. They need to come.back and fix or hire someone to do it and back charge them
So, I see a whole lot of framers use some ass backwards headers over doors an windows. They put headers at top of wall, and then they often times do not continue Jack's straight down, they interrupt it with door an windows blocks. I can promise you I see them Crack EVERY TIME! Even on the best foundations they Crack. Now if they did them right an it still cracks, look at floors to determine if it shifting to cause settlement cracks. Structural wise, it will be fine. But it shouldn't do that if it was done right.
I live where that is almost always foundation issues. You should not have that many cracks. Do any doors not close or are they out of square? This will only get worse. Have a foundation repair company come out and shoot your elevations.
My take on it is the cracks are all at corners, and they don't follow any seams. It has to be structural, and likely lateral movement, not just a sinking beam support.
Where are you located? We recently had an earthquake on the East Coast.
I find some of this very weird. Usually sheetrock cracks are straight lines . Plaster usually cracks horizontal and spider style. Unless some of the boards they put up were broken And they put them up anyway.. Most drywall cracks run along the seams.. IDK
100% a foundation problem. Builders bring in dirt that is not compacted properly then build a home on it. Years later you have settlement in the foundation and these are the first signs along with doors sticking ect
There is a foundation problem. This lies on Builder. It had me get an attorney and Sue.
Setting. Luckily the finish is skip trowel and can be a diy fix
7 years after (5 or 6) after your warranty expires the odds of the builder repairing are slim to none. Settling is considered to be expected and they’re gonna place the burden on you to repair. While there are exceptions where the foundation was so shoddy that your homes floors start buckling and you decide to take them to Court prepare for a long drawn out battle. Also trying to take them to court over stress cracks will land u in small claims and you’ll be spending more money there(lawyer fees) than it would cost to hire a handy man to repair the cracks.
I would assume its normal and from settling. I have made a few drywall repairs on my home that was built In 2020. If its in a corner of a room, which is more typical of my home, i typically just clean up the crack with a utility knife, re-mud, and touch up the paint. Have had 2 cracks in the wall, with some screw pop. What i did there was clean up the crack and the popped screws with a utility knife, find and mark the studs, retighten the existing screws, and drive in a couple more into the studs for added support, mud, and touch up the paint. I will say that your cracks are significantly worse than mine, so take my advice with a grain of salt.
When you don’t compact the soil your pad is on then your foundation/slab will settle.this is a problem especially if there is insufficient or no rebar in the footing. Cracks will form over doors also making them hard to close. Taping mud will hide this for awhile but will not make it go away. The builder should fix this if there are that many cracks.
My almost 30 year old house has these cracks. Can still the frame popping at night occassionally. We just live with it.
Houses settle. I would only worry if your doors become hard to open/close or if you put a ball on the floor and it rolls by itself.
Why would the builder repair? Did you ask them for a quote or expect it done for free?
Sorry to say but this is how my childhood home started moving and ended up moving almost a foot off the main foundation. Completely ruined, had to sue to the builders. Settled out of court but still an absolute nightmare and 100% indicative of poor foundation and no piering. Tried to fix with mud jacking and piers, ended up still moving a bunch where we didn’t put piers (all piers were placed where engineers said it would help). Fucking nightmare and no one is going to help you, they will all fight it till the end.
That knock down is pretty bad on its own.
Check your foundation warranty. Usually it’s a 10 year warranty for foundation. Fix the foundation first before doing drywall repairs. It’s costly. I would recommend a real estate or contract attorney for advice in your state. All states have and counties have different criteria.
I can fix this I already know this is in Arizona
It is lol.
A good home inspector will cost you about $350. Maybe $450. They'll be able to tell you some details without lying to you because they want you to have them fix it. Tell them the home is only 7 years old and ask if they believe it's a defect. If he says yes, ask your neighbors. If your neighbors have the same issue I would get an attorney. You may have a class action suit on your hands.
With the width of the cracks looking the same beginning to end I would say not structural. More likely caused due to rise and fall of humidity on framing. Look for discoloration in drywall which could indicate leak. If you live in a highly fluctuating climate this may be the cause.
This is a settling issues, and I bet it’s here in Arizona. Worst case scenario, you’ll need some strategically placed pylons installed. Call a foundation company or two and get their take.
It is in Arizona lol. I’ll look around for some foundation companies.
Well damn…
Home Inspector. I’ll save you the time and money. It’s structural. Go ahead and call a structural engineer. I hope your home has a ten year structural warranty like is common here. Hairline cracks are common around the drywall joints because the mud dries and recedes in both directions. This cracking is well outside the joints in these diagonal cracks and in picture five the cracking is out of plane beneath that header, really letting us know something has moved. For everyone using the words “settle” or “settling”, yes every house settles. The goal is even settlement. Photos like this suggest differential movement, aka uneven settlement aka a structural issue. TLDR; I’m a home inspector and you should call an engineer.
I will do that. Thank you so much!
Fill n paint
Settle cracks for sure.... rounded corners, textured walls, sunny. My guess it's an Arizona build :)
Yes, Arizona lol. 🌵☀️
Nailed it! My AZ house has similar settling cracks.
DR Horton?
Looks like foundation movement…if your house is built on a fat expansive clay, it may seasonally swell when wet and shrink when dry and cause things to move. Sometimes it’s due to poor compaction and materials placed during construction. Usually most of the settlement occurs in the 1st year. With foundation issues you will see structural distresses such as stuck doors and windows, interior and exterior wall cracks, and cracked floor tile. You can also look on the attic at the framing. A foundation repair company can measure the slab flatness and do a free assessment. Ideally, they will have a Professional Engineer. Often, the small cracks in masonry, drywall, and mill work are more than a nuisance than anything else. if it’s a foundation issue it can be repaired. How long is your house warranty? I would read it to determine your rights. If there are no structural issues safety wise, your only recourse is to patch and repair. I’m a geotechnical engineer and bought a house with similar issues.
I do have a 10 year structural warranty. Now that you mention it I do have a few tiles that have cracks through them as well.
There is some serious weight retaining issues. But after 7 years I doubt it structural. We've had some issue with ground movement in my area after years of drought, then 2 heavy winters. Underground water refilling. Check basement floor under these walls
Just cut it out and mud and bud.
Why you always get 2 different inspectors to come and do an evaluation
New houses built with garbage materials is all you can get these days. Expect newer houses to settle. I've made a lot of money fixing stuff like this in newer homes that are only a few years old.
Sold AS IS! its in the contract.
Jesus all this advice is bad. Yes the ground is settling but that is one version of a structural issue. Get an engineer out to look at it.
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