We're discussing typical cracks in a very general manner. If you're not comfortable discussing cracks -- whether home inspector, Realtor, seller, or buyer -- hire a professional to help you. This discussion, however, should provide you with some basic knowledge about cracks and why they happen so that you don't automatically assume the worst. Cracks do happen, just like Active Rain blogs.
Lesson Five
Read Lesson One here.
Read Lesson Two here.
Read Lesson Three here.
Read Lesson Four here.
Music for your reading pleasure
"This Ole House," Stuart Hamblen
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So far, we've discussed
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curing and shrinkage cracks in the foundation stem wall in the garage,
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cracks in the garage floor, and
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cracks in the foundation stem wall of the house proper, the living area.
Let's stick with foundations, specifically raised foundations with crawl spaces. These can be more problematic because the foundation is basically a big hole in the ground with four concrete walls around it (see diagram below). The soil on the outside of the walls is exerting pressure on them, as indicated by the black arrows in the diagram, and will have a tendency to crack at bow inward at the red arrows.
Figure 1 and Figure 2 show two actual foundation crawl spaces, one constructed with concrete and one constructed with concrete masonry units (CMU's, also known as cinder blocks).
Figure 1. Concrete wall
Figure 2. Concrete cinder block wall
As you can see, there's very little soil in the interior of the crawl space pushing back on the exterior soil, so the tendency is for the concrete wall to bow and possibly even crack, as shown in Figure 3 and Figure 4 (and those red arrows in the diagram above).
Figure 3. Cracked and bowing wall
Figure 4. Cracked and bowing wall
Figure 5 shows a close-up of the crack shown in Figure 4.
Figure 5. Close-up
In an earlier lesson we discussed poor rebar placement in he concrete. Figure 6 shows such a condition. The rebar was placed way to close to the exterior of the concrete, and eventually it forced its way out of the concrete and began rusting.
Figure 6. Poor rebar replacement.
This now become much more serious because there's virtually nothing supporting the interior floors. At this house, the floor on this side of the room had a serious slope in it, a slope that I could feel just by walking the floor. Didn't even need a manometer survey here.
Figure 7 shows the most beautiful, luxurious crawl space that I've ever been in. We'll discuss why the homeowner had this done in a later lesson.
Figure 7
That's it for this lesson. Still to be discussed:
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foundations with basements
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retaining walls
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water and efflorescence
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foundation planters
- foundation ventilation
- driveways and walkways
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chimneys
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interior floors
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interior walls
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interior ceilings
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pools and spas
For a previous blog entry on foundations not related to our lessons here, click here.
As always, if you are not comfortable discussing common cracks, hire a professional to help you.
Join us soon for Lesson Six.
Be sure to scroll down for titles and quick links to some of my other blog entries.
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Some of Russel's other blog entries
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- Concrete cracks: Lesson One
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- Not responsible for advice not taken
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Russell, your posts are among the most informative I've ever seen from an inspector. You've earned a new subscriber.