Cracks in house - advice about next steps

[Grace58]

We’ve been in our house for five years now. It’s a fairly standard ex council semi detached from the 1930’s, nothing spectacular but we like it here and are slowly doing it up and have no intentions to move right now.

About two years ago we noticed some cracking to the plaster inside our house. Nothing awful, mostly around windows and doors, but nothing you could put a coin in (which seems to be the definition of a crack to worry about!). When we had two separate builders round for some other work we asked their opinions and both said it didn’t look serious at all and to just Polyfiller it. The plaster was very badly done anyway by the former owner so we put it down to that and heating the house, and added getting it skimmed onto the list of jobs to do!

We’ve since noticed some cracks in the render of our house (not in the same place as the interior cracks) again mostly around windows. Not huge, but noticeable if you look. Again the render isn’t in the best condition to start with.

This could be just one of those things due to heating/cooling and the render and plaster being in a bad state anyway. But it could be movement, and if it is the culprit is quite probably our neighbours tree, it’s as tall as our house and is about five feet from our extension!

We should have done something sooner, I’ve stuck my head in the sand because I’ve had a lot going on in the last couple of years, I know that was bloody stupid so please be gentle.

What should my next step be? I’m loathe to get a structural engineer out straight away as I think we’d have to notify our insurance and I’m really worried we’ve voided it because the tree is so tall now. I’m leaning towards getting a builder to patch up the render cracks and then talk to our neighbour and say that the builder suspects the tree is responsible and ask if they’ll reduce the size / consider replacing it. We should have talked to them sooner but we don’t like rocking the boat (they are nice and reasonable generally, but very attached to the trees in their garden!). I know we should have had this conversation much sooner.

Any advice?!

Render will crack over time. It is most likely near windows and doors at that's where you have joins between materials which will expand and contract at different rates.

I'd ask a builder to have a look, I think render needs to be maintained to keep the house healthy. they will say if they think it's structural

Large cracks in middle of walls, diagonal , mirrored inside and out might start to be concerning. General aging cracks much less so

Thanks, that’s really reassuring! The cracks outside are all around windows and door frames, the inside ones are around windows and door frames, some around the wall-ceiling join where there is no coving too. They’re all small hairline type cracks though!