Dry lining joints

[pierre25]

Hi We bought a "new build" about 22 months ago and have a mass of cracks in the dry linings, I am told that these are all due to settlement? The cracks are mainly in line with end of window sills and run from the sill to the skirting board. There are  vertical cracks above most doors in line with the door posts. I have done a bit of reading up on the gypsum site and I think it says that the joints of dry lining  boards should be taped and not in line with openings? Can anyone here throw any light on the matter please? Cheers Pierre

[ProDave]

I assume this is a timber framed house?

 

It looks like the builders took the easy way out and despite being recommended against, have indeed put joints in line with windows etc.

 

Chances are, the building has done most of it's shrinking / settling by now, and simply filling with a flexible decorators caulk and painting is all that is needed.

[Ferdinand]

Speculating, something's have moved as it fried out fully, and perhaps they pushed ahead too quickly.

 

Suggest view the detail of the pp to see if there is anything which gives you useful info about your house.

 

Check with neighbours to locate similar problems.

 

Then it may be talk to the nhbc or whoever and get it fixed or snagged.

 

At this range IMO you should still gave comeback against the developer ... though watch out for them closing down the ltd company that built it which may have been separate. Do not delay very much.

 

Or go for the simpler options suggested.

 

F

Edited October 6, 2017 by Ferdinand

[AliG]

I have lived in a string of timber frame houses both whilst with my parents and now on my own.

 

They pretty much all had cracks like this, some worse than others.

 

They simply need filled and painted over.

 

When you say they are due to "settlement" do you mean that the builders say they are nothing to worry about but they will fix them or they won't fix them as settlement isn't their problem? Shrinkage cracks is probably a more correct term.

 

Unfortunately different builders have very different interpretations of what they need to fix  after you have paid them, some use the "pound coin rule" i.e. they will only fix a crack wide enough to get a pound coin into and will refuse to fix this kind of cracking. You could quite rightly argue that it is due to the plasterboard not being fitted in accordance with the manufacturers recommendations. The reality is that all the houses I have lived in which have been built by developers have had the plasterboard installed exactly like that.

 

More of this kind of cracking will almost certainly appear again after two years. I try and fill them when I am redecorating but it is an annoying fiddly job. They often open straight back up which might be a reflection of my decorating skills.

Edited October 6, 2017 by AliG

[Jeremy Harris]

Same here, we had a few small cracks open out, mainly around windows, but one or two elsewhere.  They aren't due to settlement, but contraction as the relative components dry and shrink.  The first couple of years were the worst, and I spent a fair time going around filling and touching them up.  Since then I've not seen any major cracks re-open, so assume things have just settled down.

 

A lot of this probably depends very much on the relative humidity variation between the time that the house was first finished and now.  It can take a fair time for a timber structure to equalise and stop moving so much with the small changes in internal humidity.

 

The only problem crack I had was high up in the vaulted ceiling above the hall.  The scrim tape seemed to be the problem there, and the eventual solution was to grind back the plaster skim to the scrim tape, remove it, bond some 50mm wide open weave fibreglass tape in place, then fill and paint.  Since doing this that crack hasn't reappeared, and I suspect it was down to the level of movement being more than the scrim tape could tolerate.

[Crofter]

The one and only crack that has appeared in my walls so far is also in the only place where I ended up aligning a board edge with an opening (it was a compromise forced on me by the spacings involved).

[ProDave]

I hope the fact that my frame will have been up nearly 2 years now, and I am only now plasterboarding, means it has already done most of it's shrinking and settling.

[Gone West]

12 hours ago, ProDave said:

I hope the fact that my frame will have been up nearly 2 years now, and I am only now plasterboarding, means it has already done most of it's shrinking and settling.

Ours was boarded four years after the frame went up and we've been lucky and haven't had any cracks.