Simon Elliott wrote:
On 29/05/2005, wrote:

Can anyone suggest a way of covering over this crack more
permanently?

Suggest exposing the brickwork and ensuring your pointing is good. And
not covering it, as you need to know if it continues to move.

There's no brickwork. That wall of the house is a series of concrete
lintels, with cladding where there aren't any windows. Whoever designed
the lintels didn't do a very good job of calculating the serviceability
limit state (I assume they had to do calcs for this in 1965?) as they
have sagged a bit.

I think the cracks opened either to the sagging of the lintels or to
settling back in the 1970s, as it seems the builders didn't do such a
good job with the foundations either. Several of the houses in the
block have had nasty settlement problems in the past. But I think the
cracks are probably moving slightly due to thermal stresses: the
concrete lintels and the stuff that was used for the cladding seem to
have very different coefficients of expansion.


Firstly we dont know what the wall is made from, I'm assuming theres
more to it than just lintels, since they would not stay up on their
own.

Unless Im mistaken, if a concrete lintel sags, it has failed. If this
is your situation, I would not be looking to decorate over the cracks,
as it may possibly be at risk of collapse. Without the necessary info,
really we can not know what is going on, but sagging crete lintels does
not sound good.


NT