"Help! My House Must Be Sinking!!"

Hey there!

I took this last weekend to attend our local Parade of Homes event put on by the Harrisburg Metropolitan Home Builders Association.

If you don't have an event like this in your area (or just don't know exactly how a bunch of houses would parade down the street), this is an event where Home Builders in the area present decorated homes for people to tour - showcasing their work and layouts.

As someone who has built over 1,000 homes, I love to see the newest offerings. But I still look through the lens of someone who has been on that end of the Parade.

I noticed a set of stairs to the second floor on one new home that squeaked like a rubber ducky for many of the steps. When I mentioned that to the Salesperson, he sheepishly said, "Yeah - I've reported that to the Builder." Not a good look (or, rather, sound) for that Home Builder.

In another home, I walked down to the basement to look at the room available for future finishing. When I did, I noticed that there was an errant crack in the floor - right at the corner at the bottom of the steps.

What's Going On? Is My House Sinking?

A potential Homebuyer may see this and start to panic - or - dismiss the work as "poor workmanship."

But - I've seen this various times in my career. And it's not as bad as you might think at first.

Now - in a perfect world - these cracks wouldn't occur. But it's not uncommon to see this.

Concrete is going to crack - sooner or later.

Most of the time, Home Builders try to plan where the cracks will go. And they either put a thin product right under the slab - OR - the concrete installer makes a straight cut with a saw in order to relieve the pressure and make the cracks happen in a straight line.

This Home Builder used the thin product to create the straight line - as seen below.

These expansion joints are usually run down the center of a concrete slab. They are also run into any foundation corner - where tension might be higher and an errant crack is more likely to show up.

In fact, the two pictures I included with this email are taken from that same corner. If you look back up at the first picture (where the errant crack is shown), the expansion crack you see just above falls right along the shadow line of the top picture.

But - even with the best planning - errant cracks may still occur. And the biggest culprits are those pesky corners.

So - if you have a homeowner panicking about errant cracks in their basement floors - let them know that they needn't panic (unless, of course, that crack opens significantly more OR a difference in height from one side of the crack to the other starts to develop.

Hope this helps to explain a very common issue that comes up with homebuilding. And I hope it helps you explain the issue to a concerned Homebuyer on your end.

Happy Building!

-Brad

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