Hi everyone. I will be grateful if someone can take a look at the attached pictures and give me your opinion about a few small cracks I have in my ceiling.
The house is 100+ years old and I’m pretty sure this is the original ceiling surface. There have been no structural issues in the house overall that I know of. The house is located in southern Ontario, so colder climate.
One crack runs most of the length of the (quite small) room. It runs along the spot where the ceiling goes from horizontal to slanted (this is a 1 + 3/4 story house). So the crack is along that natural “fold” or seam in the ceiling.
There are also a few cracks running down the ceiling slanted part running from top to bottom.
The ceiling feels firm to me. I stood up there and pressed on the ceiling around the crack. I pressed pretty hard on it. I tapped it with my fist. There was no give, no movement, no softness or brittleness.
Hard to say. Check area with moisture meter? Prior patch work looks unprofessional and i would guess a prior leak. But meter or IR camera would be helpful to help out.
BUT without much more information such as how many layers of roofing material on the 100 year old structure and how the roof is framed I could not even speculate.
Very hard if not impossible to assess from a photo of course.
Sounds like you gave it a good test just feeling it for give/movement.
With those old plaster ceilings you just never know sometimes.
I’ll tell you the scary side of the possibilities just for fun as we have lots of decades
old plaster here in Baltimore.,
I have a friend who owns some rental houses here, one night one of the tenants was sleeping on the couch in the living room when the majority of the plaster ceiling collapsed at about 2am! She was ok but scared to death the world had ended waking up in a cloud of dust and the noise was deafening!
I went over the next day and looked it over. The wood lath had been nailed on with smooth shank nails. I guess they didn’t have ring nails back then ( 30’S)? Anyway it was just a matter of time before it all gave way.
jdeoliveira2
(John Paul de Oliveira, GB-2 #86934 / AB #44580)
7
I have a friend who owns some rental houses here, one night one of the tenants was sleeping on the couch in the living room when the majority of the plaster ceiling collapsed at about 2am! She was ok but scared to death the world had ended waking up in a cloud of dust and the noise was deafening!
I went over the next day and looked it over. The wood lath had been nailed on with smooth shank nails. I guess they didn’t have ring nails back then ( 30’S)? Anyway it was just a matter of time before it all gave way.
Have you changed anything in the home? I.E. windows, doors, siding, shingles, more insulation… these could all be factors in why you have a small crack there. It looks very small but we need all the factors first to give you a proper analysis.
Thank you for all the replies so far. The attic is pretty small (remember this is 1 3/4 stories) and there is no access hatch. Unfortunately, I do not know much about the history of the building. I am looking into this for my friend who bought the house about eight years ago. Since it was bought, there has really not been any work on the structure except for a new roof last fall (I believe it was just another layer). The folks (tenants) living there now believe the cracks were present before the roof work was done, but I’d say that’s the most likely culprit for the cracks. They are not new cracks.
I’ve got photos now, perhaps the thing to do is just monitor the cracks (and/or get them patched).
I’ll gladly take any more input if there are other thoughts on this.
It’s cracked at the transition, but also there’s a crack running from the hole in the ceiling for light fixture installation to the wall. To me, this (especially the crack from the light to the wall) says that it’s stress-related. In a home this old, it would be surprising if at some point there hadn’t been at least SOME movement in the foundation.
Any change that affects moisture levels in the soil; installation of a landscape irrigation system, planting beds next to a wall, unusually high groundwater, a seasonal spring, water distribution or sewage pipe leakage… can cause foundation movement, and there are lots of opportunities for a change over 100 years.
Plaster is not very forgiving of movement. Sometimes it doesn’t take a lot to cause cracking. This looks relatively minor. Fill, paint, and monitor.
These small cracks on a 100 year old house alone do not concern me unless you can attribute some other associated structural problem with them. I had similar ceiling cracks in a 40 year old house this week, but they were attributed to the settlement of a nearby masonry fireplace. Turns out the fireplace was supported on masonry blocks that settled when the crawlspace flooded.
