After spending years residing in homes that were decades old, the southwest suburban couple decided to make the plunge into a new house.
The house was everything they wanted: larger bedrooms, a bigger back yard and even a fireplace. And brand new.
More importantly, there was no remodeling needed and no maintenance work to be done–a welcome change from the routine in their older existing houses.
Then, nine months into their new home, the couple started noticing a few hairline cracks above the door and window frames in their family room. In the kitchen, meanwhile, several gaps had developed between the wooden floorboards. Then, a bedroom closet door became hard to close.
Adding to the structural problems was the couple’s frustration: These kinds of things weren’t supposed to happen in a newly constructed house, were they?
But houses, just like humans, go through growing pains, say Chicago area builders, and minor problems are going to come up, especially in the first year. Technically, it’s what happens when a house “settles,” builders add.
“These problems don’t have anything to do with workmanship or faulty materials,” says Bruce Fogelson, the president of the Chicago-based Paramount Homes and a member of the Home Builders Association of Greater Chicago. “It has to do mostly with the forces of Mother Nature. The earth sags or wood dries out.”
“Because houses are built mostly out of wood, and the moisture content in the wood changes as we get into high humidity and very dry times of the year, that wood expands and contracts,” says Ken Neumann, the president of the Home Builders Association of Greater Chicago and the chief executive of the Warrenville-based Neumann Homes Inc.
“As a result, houses are always expanding and contracting, but typically, in the first year, you’ll get the most amount of settlement,” he adds.
Fogelson and Neumann say the fallout from a house settling is mostly minor. “These are not structural problems,” says Neumann. “These are problems that require mostly cosmetic touchup.”
There are a number of typical house-settling problems, say the builders:
– The most common malady are the aforementioned small cracks in ceiling and walls. These are caused when pieces of the wood framing behind the walls twist and turn slightly as they dry out.
“You’re most likely to see settlement problems in the walls around door or window openings,” says Neumann. “There, you’ve got a lot of pieces of wood that come together in what’s called a structural header over that opening.”
– Cracks where the walls meet the ceiling are also a typical settlement problem.
“You’ll see natural expansion and contraction in the roof truss structure where the trusses hit the interior walls of the house,” says Neumann. “The trusses in the wintertime will actually shrink as the wood contracts and will lift up the bottom part of the truss, separating the ceiling drywall from the walls.”
– Nail pops also show up frequently in the first year or so as a house settles. Again, twisting wood causes the nails to pull deeper into the wall, causing small indentations in the drywall, or to push out of the wall.
– A bowed wall–one that tends to curve in or out slightly–is also a common settlement problem. The wall bows as the wall stud behind it does the same. “That stud could be as straight as it could be when you put it in, but six months or a year later, it could bow substantially as it dries out,” says Neumann.
– Separating floor boards is also a common house-settling situation, say the builders. While unsightly, the situation often does not pose any sort of structural problem.
Floors may also “cup” or bow as a result of drying out.
– Sticky doors and windows can also be the fallout of a house settling. This occurs as the wood around those openings shifts and knocks the frames slightly out of alignment.
– Spindles, the vertical posts that support the handrail on a stairway, can also become loose as a house settles.
– Foundations may also show signs of house settling, say the builders, as the soil around the house naturally compacts. As a result, one in about 50 homes may show up with hairline cracks in the foundation of basement walls, allowing moisture–usually rainwater–into the basement.
To avoid as many settlement problems as possible, most builders take a number of precautionary construction steps, say Fogelson and Neumann. “With roof trusses, we use drywall clips so they hang on better,” says Neumann. “And all builders in Chicago always screw and glue sheets of drywall down to a frame.”
For more than a century, builders have also been using “tricks such as baseboards and moldings to hide stress points and leave them less visible,” says Fogelson.
Mostly, however, builders address settlement problems by making repairs a year or so into the life of the house.
The repairs should be free-of-charge, say Fogelson and Neumann.
Wall cracks are usually puttied, sanded and painted away. “While a crack is very easy to fix with putty, it’s somewhat more difficult to paint,” says Fogelson. “There could be a blemish.”
Planks in hardwood floors, meanwhile, can be replaced, but there could be slight aesthetic problems. “Frankly, the cure is sometimes worse than one little crack because it’s very difficult to replace one piece,” says Fogelson.
Sticky doors and windows, meanwhile, can be adjusted. And retightening spindles is often a fairly simple job.
Hairline cracks in foundation walls, meanwhile, are repaired via a process called epoxy injection. “You drill small holes into the foundation and inject epoxy into the crack,” says Fogelson. “It re-adheres the concrete together and seals it from any potential water penetration.”
While a house will continue to settle for decades, most major problems will have occurred that first year, say the builders.
“After that first year, I would be surprised to see any significant changes,” says Neumann. “But can you have some cosmetic problems? Sure. If we went through an extremely dry period, that wood is going to shrink and there could be problems. And if we got a really, really heavy snow, we could see some movement there.”
“Remember you’re going up against Mother Nature,” says Fogelson. “And that’s tough competition.”
