Horizontal crack above basement window

Hello Folks, I just inspected this house with a horizontal crack above the window. Is this a structural concern like other horizontal cracks on the basement walls?


Is the entire foundation covered with that parging material?

certainly not enough information from that one terrible picture …

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Be nice Jim… :stuck_out_tongue: :stuck_out_tongue: :shushing_face: :wink:

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I kinda pretend to try but it is not always that easy,

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Taking a guess that this is a manufactured home as some have exposed sills as to protect the siding during transport and the crack may be where the wood sill and concrete meets? :thinking:

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Hello Randy,
The house is in Alberta and here we have parging over the foundation of every house, I took a little piece of the coating off, this crack was on the concrete but only above the window & no where else.

Window likely smaller than the hole.
Concrete was used to fill the void and shrank. Now there is a horizontal shrinkage crack.
Refer a concrete repair contractor and move on.

It appears to be a basement window. What did it look like on the inside above that window?

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How is that window flashed?

Maybe…water migrated through the parging to the wood framed window opening and the wood swelled (or worse), or water migrated to the steel window opening and it rusted badly and caused the crack in your photo.

The cracking does not have to be exactly where the underlying problem may be. The cracking may be the “tip of the iceberg” and the larger problem is deep underneath. It probably is not a structural problem but could be a water penetration issue connected with no or poorly done flashing.

image

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It looks to me like there is stucco or parge coat (essentially cement) sandwiched between a metal framed window and something else (wood or cement) with no expansion gaps whatsoever. All those various materials expand and contract thermally at different rates. Something has to give and, in this case, it was the stucco or parge coat in the middle.

Maybe he went fishing this weekend. I wish I was fishing.

I considered that too, but the amount of surface areas of the underlying window frame material seems too small for significant thermal expansion/contraction to result in that kind of crack and damage. It seems to me that water is likely involved.

Agreed. If there is wood framing behind that is getting wet, then that could put expansive / outward pressure on the stucco/parge resulting in a horizontal crack.

To answer the OP’s question, whether by thermal stress or expansion of wet wood framing underneath or some combination, I do not think the crack is a structural concern.

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In my world, wet or saturated framing materials is or will become a structural concern.

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