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| Keeping an Eye on Small Building
Foundation Cracks |
| By Greg Vanden Berge |
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For those of you who don't know much about concrete or small building
foundation cracks, I would like to point something very important out to
you. Small cracks can get larger and if they do, this could lead to
future building foundation repairs.
The first thing that you need to do is inspect your building foundation.
You will be looking for cracks or gaps that are larger than 1/8 of an
inch. If you have small cracks, often referred to as hairline cracks
throughout the construction industry, this won't be that big of a
problem.
If you do have hairline cracks in your concrete building foundation,
they might not require any repairs right now, but you do need to keep an
eye on them. Make sure that you inspect your home and your building
foundation every year to make sure that these cracks aren't getting
larger.
If you have building foundation cracks that are an eighth of an inch or
smaller on the exterior and you don't notice any cracks on the interior
walls, floors or ceilings. You probably don't need to worry about your
building foundation or the structure of your home and should simply
monitor the activity of these cracks to make sure that there are not
growing. |
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What I like to do, is take pictures of my building
foundation and the rest of the home with a digital camera. If you do
this annually, you will have a photo record and you won't need to rely
on your memory. This can save you a lot of grief in the future,
especially if you can't remember the actual size of a specific concrete
crack.
If you have cracks that are larger than an eighth of an inch and you
don't have any interior problems, it wouldn't be a bad idea to measure
and photograph these particular cracks and monitor them every six
months. If they become larger, you should contact a building foundation
professional in your area for more information.
If you're cracks are larger than a quarter of an inch, your home is
definitely suffering from some sort of structural foundation damage and
there's a good chance that you have interior and exterior cracks, as a
result of this type of damage.
Anytime you have interior or exterior floor, walls or ceiling cracks,
you should contact a local contractor to make sure that the structure of
your house isn't compromised or creating a problem with the occupant
safety.
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