Hope someone can help. This house was built in 2002. It's on a slab. There are no problems on inside walls. I inspected this home in April 2002 for the new buyer. I took a picture of this area then, and I know that this crack was not present in April. Now the owner is moving and the potential new buyers hired another inspector. He found this crack and states that it will cost $2500.00 to repair. The potential new buyer is a RA and she hired her own inspector. He says that this is a serious problem. We had lots of rain in the last months due to hurricanes and all. This crack is on a side wall and runs about 1/3 of the wall, fairly straight up and down. The crack is 1/16" Does anyone have any thoughts on the severity and maybe an estimate for repairs.
Originally Posted By: pgudek This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Charles,
I'm by no means an engineer, but if that is the only symptom I don't think that it's necessarily a problem. Does the house have an expansion joint in the brick veneer at that side? If not, I would say it's normal settlement. Nearly every brick veneer house I see in this area has cracks in the brick somewhere.
Originally Posted By: charper This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Pete,
That’s what I said. But apparently the HI is a little bit of an alarmist. I’ve seen plenty of houses like this and have just advised the people to keep an eye on it.
Originally Posted By: wcampbell This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
I don’t get too alarmed when the crack is a step crack that follows the mortar, but when the bricks them selves are cracked, then I start looking at the slab.
Originally Posted By: roconnor This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
I would tend to agree with Peter that thin cracking like that is a symptom, and not necessarily the problem. But an engineer needs to make the call from an on-site inspection and follow-up.
Is the owner trying to say you missed something, even though you have pictures of the area at the time of your inspection showing no cracking? If there are no other visual indications of a problem from your inspection, how were you to know that crack would develop?
-- Robert O'Connor, PE
Eagle Engineering ?
Eagle Eye Inspections ?
NACHI Education Committee
I am absolutely amazed sometimes by how much thought goes into doing things wrong
Originally Posted By: charper This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Robert,
No the current owner has never insinuated that I missed anything, after all I do have pics. But the new inspector is making a very big issue about the crack. Me thinks he is a bit overzealous. The prospective new owner is an RA in the area, and I think he's trying to get the price of the house down. Damn Rats.
Originally Posted By: kmcmahon This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
pgudek wrote:
Charles,
I'm by no means an engineer, but if that is the only symptom I don't think that it's necessarily a problem. Does the house have an expansion joint in the brick veneer at that side? If not, I would say it's normal settlement. Nearly every brick veneer house I see in this area has cracks in the brick somewhere.
If we can get a overall pic of where this crack is located, it would help us help out a bit more. Do you have a more panned out view. This may be nothing more than a place where an expansion joint should have been.
Originally Posted By: Guest This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
It’s happened in the last six months. It’s not a step crack and the bricks themselves have succumbed.
Something moved and there's a chance that it's significant. If the house was new 6 months ago I guess I wouldn't be too alarmed, but if the house was ten years old 6 months ago and the crack just developed, it'd raise my eyebrows. The question I have is how the hell does a home inspector know what it's going to cost to fix it without knowing the cause?
Originally Posted By: pgudek This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Chad,
Something has moved, and alwals will move. The slab. Where we don't have basements the slab is designed and engineered to move on grade. This causes cracks. There is a big difference between foundation failure and Foundation settlement. I would like to refer everyone to the foundation website posted in the structural section, some time ago. Please read it, as Mike is a respected engineer on foundatins. His Knowledge is shared.
Originally Posted By: jfarsetta This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Less than 1/16" wide, evenly cracked, and on-plane (no lateral movement).
Significant? Probably not. Are there many other cracks like this, and do they have some commonality? If not, there's probably nothing going on.
The interesting thing is that the Client is a Registered Architect. The inspector may just be covering his behind. Advise your client to allow them to bring in a PE, or have him bring in his own PE.
The weight of the HIs opinion is probably around zero, once he claims this is a structural issue. Again, he may be scared that HE will be sued by the licensed professional who hired him, and is just being extra cautious.
-- Joe Farsetta
Illigitimi Non Carborundum
"Dont let the bastards grind you down..."
Originally Posted By: Brian A. Goodman This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
It’s not anything I would get excited about, but I would note it and tell the client to get a structural engineer IF it concerned him enough. Like Chad, I can’t believe the guy actually snatched a number out of the air for this…“Call 6th Sense Home Inspections, we can tell you everything!”
Originally Posted By: dcarroll This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
I agree with all the comments so far. It doesn’t look like the crack as it is shown here is of any consequence. The pictures aren’t of the same identical area. The first picture is of an area slightly to the left the crack in the second picture. If you look at the upper right hand corner of the first picture you can see the continuation of the crack as it jogs over a half a brick. So it looks to me like the crack was there when the first picture was taken.
