Drywall, Concrete walls, cracks and settlement LOTS?

[HUP]

I sure am glad I found this forum. Maybe someone here can shed some light on what to do. I a stay at home mother cannot wake up without feeling like we purchased ourselves a stressed out house that we may have to live with if they tell us it's cosmetic. I won't step back from the builders that easy! lol My spouse, a hard worker, though not a home improvement handyman, is very quiet about these things. I need to shake him with some advice from the experts and advice givers. Please HELP! This is taking time and mental energy from me being with my two young children and enjoying my spring. Raising the backyard lot was a long process this spring!

As first time home buyers, we purchased a beautiful house that just turned 8 years old. Warranty expired in Feb 2009. We moved into it last year without an inspector. NEVER AGAIN. If we had it inspected, I don't think we would have purchased it.

One part of many issues we have is with the builders old repairs and still active settlement in our 8 year old home. The builders are going to come out and have a look at the house while continuing to monitor it. I feel they may give me the run around and tell me, too bad, it's out of warranty, it's minor etc etc. Please take a look at my extensive picture collection and tell me what you think. ( subquanta.com/house )You will need to copy and paste link into browser.


Where I have an issue is, according to the previous owners and her sister that lives right beside me, these issues have been going on since the house was first built. The owner of our home and her sister were constantly at the builders office with lists of problems. Our neighbours house is actually worse! My neighbour and the owner of our house asked the builders, "What does major structural issues mean?"... "Does it mean the house has to fall down." Please keep in mind, they were at the builders office over and over again and on the phone with complaints while the warranty was still valid.

Recently, reception for the builders told me, "Maybe this is why the builders had to come out and repair so many things in the past, maybe you do have structural issues!" At the same time, she also lied and said the previous owner never mentioned any strucutural issues. WHICH IS bologna! Does anyone have any advice on how you would deal with these builders when they come back out to see the house? I'm tired of researching how to repair and fix these things. That's all I've been doing is caulking seals, spackle, tackling nail pops, cracks.. leveling our yard this year. etc etc. The rest I can't manage on my own, and to have someone repair it, it would cost at least 10's of thousands of dollars!

This is A HUGE amount of work for us to take on. We have a new existing crack in the center of our poured basement wall and old cracks showing up in the same drywall places that were already repaired once. A support beam droops through the popcorn ceiling in our living room, along with other wood frame beams bulging quite big. Bowed walls in basement, step crack in garage running through to semi attached neighbours garage. Windows are still settling. My concern is, there are new hairline cracks since we moved in the house OCT 2008. The list doesn't end.

Please see the pictures at the link above and let me know what you think. Pictures show a short description of what it is you're looking at. I think you may be shocked!? I don't know!


Thanks
HUP
Mississauga, Ontario

[HUP]

That link was

subquanta.com/house

..just in case it's hard to pick out from the huge book I wrote in my first post.


I should note: Another house, similar design to ours a street over, built by the same owners, had collapsed above their porch. This was when the city inspector came out and made the builders add an extra row of brick to the front of all similar houses they built. Another 2 houses required extra piers put into their house. 3 other houses that I'm aware of on this street have had truss uplift issues that were corrected. Same builders anyway.

The pictures are vast and explain pretty much a little too much in some areas. I figured by putting out the large and small issues with the home and picture descriptions, someone may be able to help me determine if the problems are really as extensive as I see them.

Thanks again
HUP

[pushkins]

A picture sometimes tells a thousand words, however in this case a thousand pictures tells very little, from what I can see in your pictures with the exterior foundation cracks they seem to be fairly minor and probably not too far from what one would expect of concrete in a freeze thaw environment on top of clay.
The cracks around the windows for the most could be explained as normal settling of the property.
The cracks you show in the pictures in the corners of drywall, look to be simply be a poor drywalling job, none of the cracks seem to go anywhere other than local to their origins. Most often when there is major settlement of a foundation the cracks in drywall tend to "run" and open up quite a bit, your drywall cracks seem to be reasonably small and very local. This could be explained by seasonal fluctuation. In winter with heating units turned on cracks in drywall grow larger and most definitely open up some. In summer with cooling on the cracks close up.
The picture you took of the bedroom with the "studs showing" this too could be explained away by "poor workmanship" on the drywaller's part and a combination of the glossy paint finish on that wall. The higher the sheen of paint the more it shows ANY imperfections.
The beam you say is "falling into the room", this as well looks to be more cosmetic than anything else, ANY load bearing beam that moved that much after drywall was installed would show serious drywall damage both in hat room and ALL rooms above it.
Some drywall cracks to look for that might give a foundation settling idea would be cracks that are in corners and are larger at either the top or the bottom, doors are another excellent place to look, close the door and from the inside look around at the space between the door and the door frame, this area should be reasonable uniform all the way around.
Recaulking around windows is not all that uncommon and from your pictures I'm not seeing anything that screams "I'm falling off the house".
Could this house have been built better ?.....In my opinion I'd say so from looking at your pictures

The one area I see from your pictures that would concern me is that crack in the basement wall in the cinder blocks, it runs zig zagging up the wall, this show some settlement and is undeniable. So be looking in the rooms directly above this area for damage.
The rebar sticking out of the concrete "IS" a big deal, especially in a basement where there are sometimes higher levels of moisture and then rust, in no case should rebar be exposed the way your saying it is. I'm very surprised that a building inspector passed the home with that alone.
You mentioned drainage issues that you have addressed.......does this cracked basement wall face the area you corrected drainage in ?
The cracks in the basement slab don't seem all that big (commonly known as hairline cracks) these too could have been caused by poor drainage, does your basement have a sump pump ?

[HUP]

No sump pump. The eastern wall was not where we leveled. It's covered in stamped concrete. eek! We leveled the backyard from running down towards that wall.

Yes, caulking is not uncommon. I didn't have a picture of what that window or a few others looked like before I caulked them. You can still see the window settlement through the new caulk.

Thanks for your informative reply! Appreciated greatly! That's a lot of pictures to go through! I have just gotten started. You have greatly set me into knowledge gear with your post. I went to check on a couple things and then, my camera battery was dead! I would like to share some of the next pictures with yourself. I'll explain below for now. It's good to have it in text, and just in case someone out there is patient enough to read any of it... I'm all ears!

As I had lots to say in my last post, I missed a few important notes. It is hard for me to explain without understanding what I should be looking for. I understand what you're saying about 10000? pics not really being the best help. First hand or from a knowledgable source would be best. We are going to have our home inspected by a few sound opinions. My part is to try and figure out as much as I can, so that I can feel comfortable in understanding what the inspectors tell us.

You are correct, freeze, thaw and poor drainage on clay soils! And, the home was also built during the winter. This being our first spring season in the home, most of it comes as a surprise, challenge and knowledge base of information.

We have recently leveled our back lot. I "thought" I finished it on July 1st! YAY! The water runoff from the neighbours behind doesn't run into the back of our house anymore. It sits at the end of the yard, only sopping on heavy rainfalls. That should help a great bit with the side of the house. Only problem I notice now is, we have a water stream between our shared fence with the neighbour. They also recently (1 month ago) raised their back lot to slope away from their house. This help our lot! Underneath our shared fence was not leveled. Now even more runoff goes along the new under fence trench, out through our weeping tile system, rocks and tube, beside the cracking eastern wall, between our houses and onto the front lawn. It's better, though I would still like to fill under that fence if I'm allowed to legally. I don't see why our neighbours lots behind our houses slope towards ours. Maybe it has something to do with the street sewer that runs directly in front of my house and the neighbours. I don't trust water flowing and freezing beside the home. Not after experiencing all this.

I agree, the tape jobs look to be poor craftsmanship. As like the low sheen painted walls that show studs and or mud seams in the master bedroom. You may see glossy because of the camera lighting. I wonder which new sheets of drywall were replaced and why. The builder rep who called in response to my email told me just last week, "The old owners needed "a few" sheets of drywall replaced." I asked her, "Which ones and why?" She said, "The builder will have that information when he comes out to see the house." Which will be soon! This is also they same lady that told me she remembers the old owner and her sister that still resides beside me, coming in with a huge list of cosmetic work that needed to be done on the houses. That's when she mentioned, "I wonder why they didn't mention foundation" and something like, "Maybe this is why there was so many repairs that needed to be done." "Maybe it is a foundation issue."

It makes me wonder if what I'm seeing now is natural drywall shrinkage/cracking due to the expansion and contraction that you mention, or are the new sheets experiencing further settlement. I have to give active settlement great thought after reading your post and going to check.

I see the center of the house as being the sink for heaving and settlement damage. This tends to be where most of the poor drywall taping, window sill settlement and sill frame cracks can be found. Right below those central areas is the new leaky crack that runs vertically up our basement wall.

After your post I noticed that there is an old split repair running up and down the edge of the drywall. This is "right below" the growing ceiling cracks surrounding that support beam. It is an older split. I will post pictures as soon as my cam battery charges. Would you like MORE PICTURES!? heh The split in that drywall runs from the baseboard all the way up, with some spots repaired better than others? I also primed and painted over that spot without noticing it in Nov 2008.

Upstairs, above the support beam cracks is poor craftmanship. Tape/filler on ceilings and a small linen closet that has plenty of small cracks running along the same drywall that merges with the staircase. Lots of small cracks and plenty of filler. Above the linen closet is a square patch of missing drywall above one corner.

Thanks for pointing all this out. The main level bathroom door is tight. It is almost exactly below the good ole' support beam in the living room. That area is also prone to noises coming from above and below, especially during the winter freeze season. Since summer has arrived, I have only heard this same noise 4x. Noise is way too common in the winter for my liking. It's hard to average when considering I'm outside more during the summer.. etc. I'm going to estimate that I heard 20-25 pops from that area during the winter. Pop is not a good word to explain it. Deep tones with more shock reverberation than a pop or snap. I no longer think it's the wood staircase leading downstairs to the basement like I used to. I know it's not the furnace ducts. Those are other noises I'm now used to. That and winter making the master bathroom pipes rattle against the wall as if they've been constricted by contraction. The master bathroom is on that eastern wall with foundation cracks.

I have no idea if the doors were re-straightened before we purchased the house. What I do know is, thanks! That bathroom door didn't start sticking until a few months ago. Off the top of my head, there are other separation spots around a few door frames. For some reason, square spots / pieces of drywall are missing above 2 known door frames. I need to check the rest. Thanks! The smallest bedroom window has issues with closing very tightly. It is also on the eastern wall.

It may seem small, or all be it cosmetic. I guess time will tell!


I'm sure I could go on and on. I've probably missed other important information, although I'm sure my novel is already overwhelming as it is. The pictures made me frustrated, I can only imagine someone else giving up their time to go through all that and this! lol

I need one more post on this forum before I can post pics and links. Here's a video of some of our yard leveling, work on youtube. If you want.