I have several concerns about my 20 year old house

There is a vertical crack on the 2nd (top) floor of the house Extending from
the top of the ceiling down about 3 feet. It seems to have developed
recently and this has been a wet and rainy season (washington state). The
crack look like a long thin V shape, no shearing. The widest space (top of
the V) is about 1 to 2 mm. I need to know what is causing this and how to
either reverse or stop it from getting worse.

Who should I hire to check/fix this problem? A civil enginner? A house
inspector? A general contractor? I prefer a "one-stop" shopping solution,
unless doing so would significantly compromise the quality of the solution.
I have the internet and yellow pages, but don't know where to look.

"peter" wrote in message
news:V5GKd.407$To.28@trnddc09...
I have several concerns about my 20 year old house

There is a vertical crack on the 2nd (top) floor of the house Extending
from the top of the ceiling down about 3 feet. It seems to have developed
recently and this has been a wet and rainy season (washington state). The
crack look like a long thin V shape, no shearing. The widest space (top of
the V) is about 1 to 2 mm. I need to know what is causing this and how to
either reverse or stop it from getting worse.

Who should I hire to check/fix this problem? A civil enginner? A house
inspector? A general contractor? I prefer a "one-stop" shopping solution,
unless doing so would significantly compromise the quality of the
solution. I have the internet and yellow pages, but don't know where to
look.


assuming the wall is drywall, this could be a do it yourself project
here's a relevant link
http://www.painterpages.com/plastercracks.htm
you may need to texture the repair to match you wall if it is textured

this could be done with a small paint brush after you apply the patching
material (instead of sanding it like the article referenced above mentions)
or, conversely, you could sand the repaired area then get a can of spray
texture and try to match it that way

if you cannot do it yourself, contact someone who can repair drywall (look
in yellow pages), it shoudl be a relatively inexpensive repair

House is probably settling it is common. 1mm is nothing to worry about
but other signs would be doors not square in the frames, windows not
working well and things getting out of level. Start looking in the
basement for cracks. but 1mm is nothing to get upset about, winter
summer expansion contraction will contribute to this. Maybe that wall or
a drywall joint was bad .