S01E24 - The Crack Dilemma: Cosmetic Damage or Structural Ruin

Transcript

Welcome to Moose Tales. I'm Jon with Two Moose Home Inspections, and I have some short home inspection topics that I've been carrying around with me, and I need to talk about it. So, let's dive right in.

One of the most common deficiencies that we find is cracks that are common. So, what are cracks that are common versus cracks that are a pretty significant concern? First and foremost, we aren't structural engineers, so we can't specifically state that a crack is of zero concern. However, let's be realistic here. Whenever I see poor drywall quality and I see taped joints that weren't done properly and they're cracked between the two pieces of drywall, and it's very evident that that's the case, then what I could say is that because of thermal expansion and contraction, we will see a crack along the line of that drywall.

And therefore, that is a common crack whenever there's poor craftsmanship from a drywaller. Now, somebody who is way more risk averse than I am would say, but we're not structural engineers. And so, there's really no way. And so, I really think you should hire a structural engineer, and it's probably the best thing you could do, you know, to just eliminate any and all liability from me whatsoever.

But the reality is whenever we have dissimilar materials, then there is going to be cracking. So sometimes we have a piece of drywall, and we have a piece of wood. Maybe it is some kind of wood trim, maybe it is a large central beam for a roof and the drywall comes up to that. Now, two things are going to occur.

One, let's say that piece of wood is going to come from the factory at maybe like a 20% moisture.

If the wood is super kiln dried from manufacture, then maybe it'll be at 15%.

But what will happen is that being in our high alpine environment in Colorado, that wood is actually going to shrink because it's going to get to about five, maybe 6%. And whenever it's five or 6% moisture content, well, as it shrunk, I'm not thinking that that drywall is going to expand. And if the joint between the two is non-compliant, then we're going to get a crack and a lot of times drywall instead of taking the time to come back and caulk joints and do things like that, I'll just throw a little bit of mud in it.

It looks good, looks great, probably looks good and great for the next 3 to 6 months. And by that time, the house has been closed, the repairs are done, all accounts payable have been paid and they move on to the next job. And that's fine. That's just the thing that happens. So, what I would really want to see is I want some type of caulking in between there that is able to stretch, expand and contract as, let's say we have a hot summer day, and all of that drywall is expanding and then that wood is expanding.

But they're expanding at different rates now. They're bumping into each other and then on a colder day, they're going to shrink, but they shrink at different rates. And so, they're stretching and pulling apart from each other. And without that caulking, we're going to have cracks. Same thing. We're going to see cracks in the shower. You should not be putting grout in the corner of showers.

But what does everybody do? They put grout in the corners of the showers. That's supposed to be caulking. And so, what happens in those corners again is you take that hot shower, and all those tiles expand. Now, again, porcelain versus tile. Porcelain is not going to expand as much, but that's a whole other conversation for a whole other day.

But in the corner is where that stress is going to be relieved as a crack. And so, we just don't want to have any kind of cracking like that occur. But it's common. It's something that we see all the time. So, we have dissimilar materials. We have insulation practices that are not performed adequately, and that is what I would refer to as a common crack.

Now, another type of common crack would be with the foundation in the structure of the house. People sometimes freak out whenever they see cracks in concrete. You have to keep in mind that that concrete is going as it cures is going to shrink. And as it shrinks, it is really applying a lot of force and a lot of pressure on that concrete.

And you're going to see these like hairline cracks. That's extremely common, extremely normal. And it's nothing to be worried about. Is it perfect? And they do the curing process perfectly to avoid all these things. No, they didn't. But I mean, like, who does, right? Who does? We see things such as slabs that are poured and we basically call this having a burnt crust.

What I mean by that is the slab should be completely smooth. The slab should be awesome with no cracks except for where we put in these relief cuts. And that's where it should be cracking. But sometimes if you don't manage how quickly that moisture is escaping from that concrete. If you didn't pre-wet the forms, if you didn't do a lot of little steps that add up to a lot or let's say the sun is out and you have these concrete sections that are drying out a lot faster than other ones.

I call that having a burnt crust. And what will happen is we're going to get cracks along the edges where there should not be cracks, but it's because moisture has been taken out too quickly.

is that the end of times and now we can't trust this particular concrete slab.

No, not at all. It's basically cosmetic. However, was it done correctly? No, but it's common. It's not a huge issue.

similarly, we have cracks inside of the house that occur. And sometimes people look at that and say, I don't know, this looks like foundation shifting. Yeah, its kind of foundation shifting.

If we think about it. Let's say the foundation was perfectly stable and perfectly good. A lot of times when we do cabinetry, for instance, we are down to 64th of an inch precision when making these cabinets. But whenever we are doing rough framing of a house, you know, a quarter inch, half inch mat, good enough, you know, whatever.

And so, what will happen is that right now, whenever we build the house, everything's being held up by the nails. But once we put on all of the weight of the house, we put on the roof, we put on all the sheathing, we put on all the drywall, we put on everything in this house, such as the windows and other things in the house.

It's going to push down. And now those nails are no longer supporting it.

So, yes, we have settled that wood by that quarter inch or maybe half an inch or whatever. And now we're done moving. And so how that works is, again, sometimes that wood might be coming from manufacturer 20% moisture because it's just for you know, your rough framing and it's going to go all the way down to 5% moisture.

Does anybody do what they're supposed to do? Once we get the exterior cladding on,

supposed to put three months of dehumidification at the commercial scale, three months of dehumidification to make sure that everything has shrunk the way it's supposed to. Before we installed the drywall.

Does anybody do it? Nobody in the history of man has ever done it. But that's what you're supposed to do. And why is that? Well, because what will happen is I'm going to put drywall onto a piece of wood that is going to shrink. Now, that drywall is not going to shrink. It's very stable in its current form.

As that wood shrinks, though, the ceiling is now coming closer to the floor. And what's going to happen? We're going to have buckling; we're going to have cracking. We're going to have a lot of other issues that are going to present themselves over the next few months as everything dries out. Those cracks are common. Those cracks are from settling.

Is that a problem? No. Is that common? Yes. Almost every single house has that. And so, for me, whenever I say cracks, common, it could actually be settlement. It could actually be a lot of things that people would gasp and be like, my gosh, I can't believe that there was a settlement in this house. Well, here's the deal.

The house settled. It probably settled, you know, after the first couple of months. And it's been here for the last 50 years. And none of these cracks appear to be getting any larger. Now, there are things that we see with cracks, especially like the propagation of the crack. Where's the crack coming from? Where's the crack going? What is the shape of the crack?

Is it small on one side and big on the other? Or let's say like concrete walls. Concrete walls aren't always supposed to crack. I mean, yes, I did say it's common for them to crack, but there are certain types of cracks that you do not want to see in these concrete foundation walls. Let's imagine that pushing inward towards the house is a huge hydraulic force because we have a super saturated soil and it is now pushing up against the side of this house with thousands of pounds of force that concrete cannot bend.

It is not compliant. And so, what will happen is that concrete will then, because it's brittle, kind of snap kind of crack.

If I'm standing inside that crawl space, I'm standing inside that basement and looking directly at the crack.

What I will see is that closer to me, the crack is more wide open and further away from me, deeper into the wall the crack is more closed.

that can sometimes tell me that there was a hydraulic force pushing on that foundation wall, forcing it into the house, and it's kind of snapping it.

And so, if that's the case, well, then, yeah, that might be a not common crack that I would then consider to be a major foundation issue. Now, again, if I see all these common cracks throughout the House, there is the possibility that this is a modular home that was transported on a truck. And I'm just going to put air quotes and say, hypothetically, even though we know this right now is a true story, but hypothetically, we could have a transported modular system that accidentally struck a 16 foot tall bridge that it did not have the clearance to go under and has basically made the entire house go askew.

Now, with a situation like that, what you're also going to see is a lot of compounding issues, meaning that tile might be popping off, we might have cracks and places that we wouldn't normally see.

We have cracks in ways that we wouldn't normally see. We have windows that aren't opening and closing easily. We have doors that aren't closing or aren't latching or aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing, the way that one would expect it to be, especially straight from the factory. And so, a lot of times whenever there is foundation movement, there are issues.

Let's say we have a snow loading issue. There are things that we will be able to see, such as issues with the roof, the ridge line, issues with windows not operating properly, uneven floors, slants or slopes on the floors on the property, whatever, and all of the cracks with all these other issues are then going to tell you, hey, there's actually a bigger issue going on.

But the reality is common cracks are common and common cracks are everywhere. And just because there is a crack doesn't mean that there's necessarily something wrong with the house, with the property. And in fact, even some of these structural cracks are 100% expected because of the lack of attention to detail when framing a house that will then present itself whenever there is a lack of attention to detail, to moisture levels in certain woods, whenever there is a lack to attention to detail, whenever you're putting up your drywall and you aren't accounting for shrinkage, whenever there is a lack to attention to detail, whenever you're doing your drywall and you're not taping scenes properly, I mean,

Basically, just seems like if everybody would just pay attention to what they're doing and do a good job, we probably wouldn't have all these common cracks. But unfortunately, that's why they're common.

And with that, that's upon.