Cracks appearing in the house

[vitalmum]

Cracks have been getting worse in the plaster inside our home over the last 2 years. I’m worried that they could be due to major restructuring that took place over this period on the adjoining semi (without a party wall agreement). This involved extending at the rear and to the side of the house, knocking out 4 ground level walls, replacing joists, floorboards, all the doors and windows, re-plastering all walls, and much more.

DH thinks the cracks are due to settlement because of the works next door and nothing to worry about. He also thinks they may be due to us heating the house a lot more now that we are retired and at home more, and also because the house hasn’t been painted for about 7 years. The cracks run diagonally from a few door frames, and some window frames, for a foot or more. They are also visible in ceilings where they are just plastered and not papered, and there are some which are splitting the coving in the bedrooms. Additionally, there are cracks around the window frames on the inside of the house (along the windowsills, up the sides and along the top). Photos attached (sorry for the quality but the camera doesn’t like blank white walls!).

Our current buildings & contents insurance runs out in a month. We would be happy to renew it but the insurer will not insure some recently bought high value collectibles. We have found another who is happy to. However, we’re in a predicament because of these cracks.

Should we tell the current insurer? If so, what would they do?

Or, should we hire a structural engineer ourselves (and if so, is a visual inspection with an email diagnosis but no report sufficient)? If the engineer agrees with my DH, I presume we wouldn’t need to tell the new insurer about the cracks?

I’m hoping that some of you might be structural engineers or in property insurance, or faced a similar problem yourselves.

Your advice on the cracks, the insurer and the engineer would be gratefully received.

Speak to your current insurer now - even if you change to a different one, if the are have been dealing with something they will continue to do so. The insurers will appoint a surveyor to come and take a look.

Do you have legal cover on the insurance? Did you agree to next door's works without a PWA or did you only become aware during or after the works the extent of them?

Yes, we have legal cover with the house insurance.
We received notification from the council and the new neighbour came around to show us the plans. We had received mail from companies offering their services to do a party wall survey but when I asked him about it he said it wasn’t necessary and they were just touting for business. As he’s in the building trade and a new neighbour we naively went along with this. A few weeks after the work started we realised that they were inserting metal girders into the party wall. When we questioned him about it he pretended he didn’t know anything about a PWA! And then started questioning whether it was the builder or the architect who should have done it.

Btw, I added 9 photos. Can you see them? I can only see one

Only 1 photo shows up - there's a limit on how many you can upload daily.

Speak to your insurers. He sounds like a cowboy. Have you checked on the council's planning portal whether he's had building control sign off on his works?

No, we haven't checked, but I'm certain he will have done everything to safeguard his own property!
Do you know if the insurer will charge us for the surveyor?
I've added some more photos. Hope they show up.

Contact your insurer. There are many reasons why walls can start to crack, but it could well be that works next door have brought them on. But you need a building surveyor to have a look. Next door are CF for not drawing up a party wall agreement.

As wowfudge says, check your Council planning portal.
Building control only sign off building works when everything has been done correctly. Nothing to do with safeguarding his property.
I also agree that he does sound like a bit of a cowboy for pretending that he knew nothing about Party Wall Agreement, it’s a legal document that can be necessary. Especially if he has inserted joists into your wall
You would have received mail about the party wall because companies check the planning portals for proposed building works.
If you are not honest with your insurance company then your insurance may be invalid

For any insurance claim you usually have to pay an excess - but that's all should have to pay. Please just call your insurers. How much did that plastering cost you and look at all those cracks. You may have been naive, but there's no need to bury your heads in the sand now and be foolish as this neighbour may well have caused damage to your house.

DH is a Structural Engineer. These look like hairline cracks as they don’t appear to be greater than 2 mm wide. If it was settlement (subsidence) you would see the cracks clearly on the outside of the building. Bricks would have cracks through them. Inner walls would be showing wider cracks.

However, I would get a report done if you are worried. We have similar cracks in plaster that’s dried out. These cracks appear more cosmetic than structural. The crack in the corner looks a bit bigger so how does this wall get attached to another wall? Can you see any external cracks? Is there any differential settlement between two walls in this area?

There may be issues with the work down to the party wall but if your walls are not sagging or bulging, or looking damaged. it may well be nothing to worry about. Houses do move a bit. If you are on clay, do look for cracks on the outside of the building. Clay shrinks and is the classic soil for subsidence. If a report says they are hairline cracks and there are no underlying issues, I would just get them repaired.

I think the "cracks in the corner" you are referring to BubblesBuddy are the ones in the photo repeated below. These cracks are on the inside of a painted window frame (similar thing is happening on the inside of other windows too). The outside wall is pebble dashed. There is some shrinkage all along the frame as shown in the 2nd photo attached.

I'm worried about the coving and wall above a bedroom window too - photo attached. Is this normal thermal shrinkage or settlement?

Thank you for your advice all!

I couldn't find a way of seeing the sign off on the completed works. What should I be looking for? I looked at the Council planning portal but couldn't see anything that I would be able to look at.

I would just let your insurer deal with it. They will almost certainly pass your claim to a specialist company who will send an engineer. If engineer is concerned, he will commission more tests. They will only be looking for subsidence (sudden foundation inadequacy) as your policy is unlikely to cover for settlement cracks (readjusting the the new loads of your neighbour's house) or any kind of abnormality in the structure (bulging walls etc).
HOWEVER, it may be that your insurance decide to claim from neighbour's insurance company if the cracks can be directly attributed to their building work - I would imagine this would be where the legal cover would come in.
The investigations are likely to be free to you if you do it this way, and IF they find subsidence, you will be liable for first part of claim (usually £1000). If they don't find subsidence, then it will be up to you to diagnose and repair.
It's always better to be open and upfront with your insurance company and that's why I would call then now and let them deicide, rather than getting your own structural engineer in. Doing so will cost you the best part of £1000 and you may have to then go back to the insurance company with a claim and will have to explain why you didn't contact them immediately.
And I would VERY DEFINTELTY not move insurers until this claim is progressing. It's just another potential argument you don't want to have, in this already stressful situation.
I hope you're not planning to move in the next 2-3 years as this could be slow to resolve.

If there are no obvious cracks on the outside of the house, I don’t think it’s subsidence. Subsidence is typical on clay soils that dry out and inadequate foundations - it’s not purely a foundation issue or no older houses from several centuries ago would be standing at all.

Therefore, Is there any crack at all through the pebble dash? Engineers monitor the cracks to see if they are getting worse but I rather suspect these are too small. The window crack looks more like the wood shrinking - possibly in the hot weather. I’m not sure any of these cracks are major or anything to worry about but you can put in a claim and ask or just get an engineers report. If you do it independently they are working for you, not the insurance company, so it might be an advantage to do that.

Building regs are frequently not issued by councils now. It’s a mess of a system really. You could ask the planning dept who now does their building control and go from there. In the meantime I would not worry too much. If you get cracks opening up through the pebble dash that measure at least 2mm, then definitely get an engineer in.

Fantasia243 - we really are hoping that they're just settlement cracks and nothing that needs major works. If it's just a matter of filling the cracks and redecorating we would not want to claim from the neighbours but would do it/pay for it ourselves. The main worry is if the cracks are due to something serious in which case I suppose our insurance company would handle it for us once we'd paid any excess.

We don't want to move insurer to save money (though that is always welcome!) but because the current insurer will not insure some recently bought high value collectibles. So, are you saying we can ask the current insurers to investigate the cracks but still move to another insurer in about 3 weeks time? We obviously do not want the new insurer to invalidate our insurance because we didn't flag up these concerns to the current insurer or them.

I hope it doesn't take 2-3 years to resolve! That would be intolerable with the type of neighbours we now have.

Bubblesbuddy - I can't see any wide cracks in the pebble dash, one or two small ones are there though. However, the pebble dash has been there for more than 30 years and some of the pebbling has fallen off.

Why would an independent report be advantageous over going straight to the insurer? I don't understand why the engineer would do things differently if hired through the insurer?

So, I think what you're saying is that you'd leave telling the current insurer and the new insurer of the cracks. Then if the cracks got more than 2mm wide you'd notify the new insurer. Wouldn't the new insurer be unhappy about this as the situation had been developing over the previous insurance?

Read your insurance documents. See what they state about informing them of issues. If necessary you can always have a specific policy for the items the current insurer won't provide cover for.

Unfortunately the insurer doesn’t want us to do that as they reckon there’s a greater risk of a break-in. The other insurer is happy to include the collectibles in the contents. Perhaps we just got to speak to someone who didn’t fully understand at the current insurer? They’ve sent us a renewal package yesterday! I suppose it’s automated.

Hi, does anyone have any thoughts about these cracks, that appear on the inside and outside of flat (photos attached). Substinence? What work/costs would be involved to fix?

NeonMist - I would be grateful if you could start this as a new thread as I am awaiting replies to my post still.

Your buildings insurance can be separate from your contents one.

Reinsure contents only with new insurer and stick with the original one to sort out the cracks in the walls issue.

Thanks sunshinesupermum. I hadn’t considered that as we’ve always done it together!

Happy to help! Good luck.

If you employ a Structural Engineer they are working for you. I don’t think this is structural if there are not gaping cracks in the pebble dash and you don’t have bulging walls or gaps where you can see into the ceiling voids to the floor above. But you should get it looked at to satisfy your questions.

If the Structural Engineer (or some other building person) is appointed by the insurance company or loss adjuster they are in effect working for the insurance company not you. In serious cases of structural damage there can be a huge amount of wrangling regarding repair costs and even what repairs are necessary. Insurance companies will always seek to minimise their liability so don’t involve them unless you have to and make sure you protect your position if you do.

Of course you can insure contents separately from the building. Just move the contents policy. If the Valuables are small enough, get a safe. That usually brings policies down. Upgrade all home security and get an alarm. That’s usually helps too. There are specialist insurance comps ies thst cover higher value objects. Start googling. You just need one where individual items can be put in at their value and are insured separately.

Just to update everyone who was kind enough to offer me advice!

Following BubblesBuddy’s advice, we hired our own Structural Engineer to come and look at the cracks. He thinks that the cracks are not structural and should be cosmetically filled, with a few needing some lath and plaster work. He also thinks that the roof purlin in the left hand side of the loft space needs to be strengthened with four vertical supports as there is some outward movement to an external wall (not the neighbour’s side) - it’s 1% out of vertical at ground level and out of vertical between 10mm-50mm along various points at roof level. Also he thinks that some of the plaster is debonding and cracking around the house because of the extensive works next door. We’ll be getting a builder in to do the recommended work once we’ve had some quotes.

Regarding the insurance, we will be moving insurers for both buildings and contents as the current insurer doesn’t insure contents to the higher level that we require and because of that won’t insure us for the buildings insurance either! Our structural engineer said the works required were classed as ‘wear and tear’ and not covered under buildings insurance. He advised us to tell the insurer of his findings and that we will be getting the work done and signed off by him once completed. So, hopefully, the new insurer will be happy with that! We’ll be ringing around tomorrow. Any advice you think may be helpful in this respect will be gratefully received!

Well the findings are good news in that there are no serious faults so you should get insurance ok. I think you did the right thing to get your own report and act on it. We have high value contents insurance and do separate it from the house. Hope it all works out.

Just found this thread as I have very similar cracks in our 1930s house. We moved in 2 years ago and I have checked our survey report and the surveyor mentions cracks and said there was some evidence of 'movement' which scared me (I didn't notice it the first time I read it when I was excited about moving into our first home) although he said it was normal for the age and location (SE London). Now I see cracks everywhere! There are too long ones on the living room ceiling. Our bedroom is upstairs and now I'm scared to have sex in case we make them worse, lol. My OH also works out in the bedroom sometimes even when I ask him not to (he thinks I'm being crazy but he uses huge kettlebells). I hate owning a home. I kind of want to go back to renting so this is someone else's problem.