In article .com, Joe says...

On Feb 18, 11:05 am, wrote:
Hi,

We're in a 45 year old raised ranch that we moved into last October.
It's now Feburary. A few weeks ago a crack started appearing in the
living room/dining area ceiling. It's very narrow (almost hairline)
and runs diagonaly out from the outside of a corner (picture an "L"
with the crack runing down and left from the lower-left corner of the
letter "L"). It's a couple feet long.

We recently had a bunch o' snow (we're near Syracuse, NY) but I don't
think that's it as I noticed the cracks before the snow hit.

There are also a couple of shorter but similar cracks in walls that
angle away from interior doorways -- one near the ceiling crack and
the other in another doorway at the other end of the house.

So, I'm trying to figure out if this is something I should panic about
(roof/beams collapsing) or if it's just "old-houses-do-that-besides-
it's-cold-so-wood-changes-shape" stuff. And what can/should be done.

Appreciate any help/knowledge/tips (and I hope I'm in the right group
for this) and let me know if I need to post more info.

Thanks,

Jeff

The cracks you see are due to the structure moving. What you term a
'raised ranch' is presumably sitting on concrete blocks comprisining a
crawl space. If the structure is shifting it could be settling of the
foundation. How much settling and why is best determined by a
structural engineer who can make recommendations for best remedies. If
yours is tract home, your neighbors will have had similar problems. so
ask them about it, too.
Decent repairs are possible in plaster or drywall, but don't waste any
money on that until the cause is corrected. HTH


Was a new roof put on before sale? Maybe they have too many layers of shingles
on, or it's otherwise settling. Or possibly they took the max number of layers
off and put a single set of new shingles on, so the weight changed that way.

Does the ceilings or walls like like they're recently done? Maybe to cover up a
problem the previous owners have been living with for years and fixed up for
sale.

My 1960 hillside rancher here near Poughkeepsie was thrown down on a monolithic
slab without proper footers. Most of it is buried enough (42" by code for
frostline) but one corner and side wasn't, and I had frost heave issues. The
cost of a foundation repair is something that gets a lot of homeowners to try to
ignore it and do hides and repeated cosmetic repairs. Me, I bit the bullet and
fixed it for good. My movement issues showed up differently, though.

Yes, houses settle and cracks show, but you'd expect the cracks would be stable
after 45 years, or long fixed and no more movement to repeat them. New cracks
on a house of that age that was recently sold is suspicious. Get an engineer to
look at it. But don't panic about it.

Banty