my house has got many cracks in the walls

[Pouatchee]

10 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

The rendering is cracked. Is it cracked on the opposite side of the wall in the same line? 

 

weird how the crack goes. it goes left towards the beam and not straight out towards the outer wall.

6 minutes ago, JeffersLos said:

Put in guttering and a drain to a soakaway 5 meters away from the building before the rainy season. 

 

Prevention is better than cure. 

 

I will have to research that. I am not very knowledgeable about this, but you are giving me a line to follow. Everyone I asked said it would be fine. The foreman who built the house and a few other people. I guess the idiom 'trust no one' comes to mind

[Pouatchee]

9 minutes ago, JeffersLos said:

Put in guttering and a drain to a soakaway 5 meters away from the building before the rainy season. 

 

 

ohhh... that will be difficult. the only place i have 5 meters is in the front of the house. the rest of the house only has about 2.5 meters from house to retaining wall on 3 sides

[Yellowtail]

4 minutes ago, Pouatchee said:

 

weird how the crack goes. it goes left towards the beam and not straight out towards the outer wall.

 

I will have to research that. I am not very knowledgeable about this, but you are giving me a line to follow. Everyone I asked said it would be fine. The foreman who built the house and a few other people. I guess the idiom 'trust no one' comes to mind

The house appears to be above grade, so as long as rainwater drains around it and not thought it, it will be fine. 

 

[Pouatchee]

15 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

The house appears to be above grade, so as long as rainwater drains around it and not thought it, it will be fine. 

 

 

That is correct. when we put in the pilons, 8 m long' most of them were a few meters still sticking above the dirt we added. there was one soft spot i knew of and one i didnt know of, and those were the only places where the pilons went in deeper than the average. At first I did not want to put pilons because I was told it would cost over 150 000bht. We were lucky and got 30 for 80k.

It was money well spent and i am glad now my wife got her way

[JeffersLos]

38 minutes ago, Pouatchee said:

 

weird how the crack goes. it goes left towards the beam and not straight out towards the outer wall.

 

I will have to research that. I am not very knowledgeable about this, but you are giving me a line to follow. Everyone I asked said it would be fine. The foreman who built the house and a few other people. I guess the idiom 'trust no one' comes to mind

 

It isn't really an answer that anybody can give with 100% accuracy. Far too many variables.

 

The soil changing from water logged and soft to dry and hard and back again often lead to subsidence. Especially during a tropical rainy season where it could be waterlogged for months.

 

It's why roofs have gutters. Water from the entire area of the roof is pouring down into the foundation area without them.

 

Foundation area gets soft and water logged, subsidence and cracks appear. 

 

36 minutes ago, Pouatchee said:

 

ohhh... that will be difficult. the only place i have 5 meters is in the front of the house. the rest of the house only has about 2.5 meters from house to retaining wall on 3 sides

 

You want the water to drain as far as possible from the foundation. 

[sandyf]

7 hours ago, sirineou said:

does not look like settlement to, looks like separation,

I would agree. Cracks like that are quite common alongside pillars and beams, usually caused by differential  contraction and more evident when the builder has been in too much of a hurry.

[Mark Nothing]

My condo walls have cracks just like yours.  

 

The solution I used to hide the internal wall cracks was a paintable fiber mesh wallpaper after filling in the cracks with putty.  It looks much better.  But some of the cracks were still visible so hid them with framed paintings or large mirrors.

 

Then just learned to live with it.  Better but not perfect.

[BE88]

8 hours ago, Bday Prang said:

Indeed, the forces generated by distortion due to movement can be considerable, and cracking invariably occurs initially at the weak points, ie corners.   Thats why ships generally employ  round windows (port holes) to avoid this happening.  If movement continues over time cracks will also start to appear at the joints between concrete beams and columns. and where block walls connect to columns too

 

Interesting to know the reason for the round windows on ships. Thank you

 

[BenStark]

At the backside of my house they built 4 houses in the white block.

 

They filled up about 1 meter, and I didn't see them drive piles.

 

The houses are now finished 2 years, and I can see the cracks from my living room, which is about 30 meters distance.

 

They have "fixed" the cracks 3 times already since they finished the built, and once the rains season start thy will repair them again

[Pouatchee]

33 minutes ago, BenStark said:

They filled up about 1 meter, and I didn't see them drive piles.

 

heck, those are monster cracks... pilons will make all the difference long term...

they are worth the extra cost. I was just plain lucky i got them the price i did...

30 for 80k was a steal

Edited February 10 by Pouatchee

[freeworld]

On 2/10/2024 at 8:50 AM, Pouatchee said:

photos

-- hard to see in picture 2, but we have footings on all of the pilons

-- pic 4 is of the retaining wall made using nano bricks which were then filled in with concrete and rods of rebar were put into them

-- we used 15 cm light bricks for most of the house, the traditional red bricks were used for the bathroom areas... don't know why. apparently has to do with humidity

-- we used sheet metal 1.5 inches with foam insulation for the roof. we chose the model that had metal on top and on the bottom

-- the interior walls were constructed with traditional red bricks

-- horizontal beams were laid at about 1.8 meters

 

For the roof structure I chose the regular steel, I am not sure if it is 1.2 or 1.5mm. 

 

I would say that most of the cracks are about .5mm, but a few are about 1mm... I didn't measure yet. It is hard to say if the cracks are deep or not. I took a tile grinding wheel and ground in some spots then put TOA crack filler in hoping it would work. I also used a drill bit and drilled at the beginning and end of the cracks in order to try to stop the cracks from expanding like it is done on plastic and car dashes. that seems to have helped. I think everything was done the right way. we used all the best materials we could afford. it is a small house 10 x12 so I don't think the weight is a very big factor. 

 

@The Old Bull I can't see any floor cracking the tiles seem intact. There is a bit of grout in one particular line of tiles that seems to have vanished...

 

I will keep reading your posts and I appreciate your advice. 

 

Some comments.

 

Generally solid construction.

The foundation seems well founded on driven RC piles and tied together with RC tie beams/floor slab.

The soil looks clayey which could be susceptible to wetting and drying expansion and contraction.

Some masonry joints not overlapped for tying masonry together.

Metal roof is large surface exposed to heating and cooling and probably fixed to top of columns and has potential for expansion and contraction causing some stress and strain at the top of columns.

 

Cracks seen are mainly minor in the rendering or just separation at concrete/masonry due to shrinkage, temp variations and material (fine sand/cement for rendering)

 

1) The joints between masonry concrete column where cracked appears - prepare the joint from ceiling to floor and fill with a flexible mastic sealant then paint over with an acrylic/latex wall paint.

 

2) Other small cracks in the rendering - prepare crack and fill with flex sealant, apply mesh tape over the crack and then apply a acrylic/latex type wall paint.

Edited February 11 by freeworld

[Pouatchee]

54 minutes ago, freeworld said:

Metal roof is large surface exposed to heating and cooling and probably fixed to top of columns and has potential for expansion and contraction causing some stress and strain at the top of columns.

 

that is a great statement. I hadn't thought of that. when the roof expands and contracts we can hear it fairly well. and it wouldn't surprise me if that added stress on the beams. We actually had the company over to inspect the causes of the sounds and whether the screws were compromised. The guys that came gave us a thumbs up. Your explanation is quite possible one of the reasons for the cracks. Thanks very much

 

Too all who have taken the time to read my op, look at my photos and have offered advice, I sincerely appreciate all your help.

[Yellowtail]

I think a ten-meter piece of steel channel will only expand a little over one millimeter with a ten degree C temperature change. It's not that. 

 

And I think concrete expands just slightly more than steel.

[steven100]

Plenty of cracks appear on concrete walls ....   it's cosmetic and not structural.

It's caused by heat and contraction .....    nothing to worry about. 

[LennyW]

On 2/9/2024 at 9:29 AM, LennyW said:

Depends how the house was built as well.

Being a single story many builders dont put a top concrete beam on the posts, they just use the roof metal welded to the post rebar. The roof expands and contracts every day pushing the posts out - cracking will never be resolved.

I have just seen the pictures, i believe the problem is as i said, that is a lot of metal and a flat, not pitched roof, so the lateral movements will be more.

[Pouatchee]

50 minutes ago, LennyW said:

I have just seen the pictures, i believe the problem is as i said, that is a lot of metal and a flat, not pitched roof, so the lateral movements will be more.

 

I am by far no expert. The roof is about 12 m from highest point to lowest point. Thehighest point is about 1.5 m higher than the lowest.

 

I dont know if that qualifies as a not pitched roof. But when it rains... it is a waterfall

[Yellowtail]

35 minutes ago, Pouatchee said:

 

I am by far no expert. The roof is about 12 m from highest point to lowest point. Thehighest point is about 1.5 m higher than the lowest.

 

I dont know if that qualifies as a not pitched roof. But when it rains... it is a waterfall

The roof is fine. Is the waterfalling on concrete? If not, you should think about adding a gutter and downspout to minimize erosion.  

[Pouatchee]

47 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

The roof is fine. Is the waterfalling on concrete? If not, you should think about adding a gutter and downspout to minimize erosion.  

 

gutter is in already... 32k for 13m. ouch....

[Kalasin Jo]

On 2/10/2024 at 8:51 AM, sirineou said:

I don't think he meant landfill, but rather adding dirt to elevate the lot. 5 years is plenty of time for it to settle

Round our way every build site seems to be filled to make a level site. Ours was. On sandy poor agricultural use ground the stand alone site originally sloping down from the road. Very sandy fill, not compacted. Left to settle for 12 months. Considerable depth towards rear of the plot, the house stands in the middle of the plot.

Single storey house  by design raised a meter off the new ground level. Piers at 3 metre intervals set in concrete pads at original ground. Not a straightforward single box shape but 3 boxes 2 smaller ones extending from the main one to the side and to the front. Quite a complex but pleasing to the eye design, resulting in 3 connected pitched roofs. Floors are prefabricated, bought in, panels, except for the 2 wet room shower floors which were cast on site at a slightly lower level and with an imperceptible but effective drainage slope. In addition to the rebar beams at floor level a rebar tie beam runs horizontally round the house at a metre above the floor but broken by double front and single rear doors. This is the base for all the teak framed windows, which to my amazement have no lintels above. But this has not given any problems as the very lightweight blockwork is not load bearing. The tie beam is made to look like an external design rather than structural feature. Pitched roofs with welded on site steel frame and rails on which sit concrete tiles. Apparently the Land Office required some changes due to structural loading concerns. All dealt with by the builder. The house is now 9 years old and still looks much as it did when completed but is now surrounded by a mature garden planted by us.

Long intro to end up saying we have a few hairline cracks and there is one major crack which appeared within a few months in one bathroom in an exterior single skin block wall between piers running horizontally but lazily downwards from the top of one towards the  base of the other but ending at the ring beam I mentioned above. This wall has a high level venting window and the exterior unit of the bedroom aircon is mounted on it. Our 2 open jointed earth base septic tanks are sited close, too close with hindsight, to one of these piers and due to the design of the house there is heavy roof water run off there too. After about 12 months you could see daylight though this crack.  Regularly filled with ready mixed plaster filler over about 18 months until it stopped reopening for about 6 years ....but it's started opening again recently once the rain season ended. Why? I wonder.

Apologies. I've gone on too long in what was intended as a short(ish) comment on fill!ed sites.

[Pouatchee]

6 hours ago, Kalasin Jo said:

Why? I wonder.

Apologies. I've gone on too long in what was intended as a short(ish) comment on fill!ed sites.

 

nah man. not too long. interesting. I think its important for foreigners to know about this. If I could do it all over again i would use rock for most of the fill and then i would add a layer of the two kind of dirt i used. i used a sandy dirt initially and a very fine dirt (like what they use to make the grey bricks here). one guy close to my house did that and i thought he was loonie at first only to realise he had done the right thing.

 

your crack that you can see through... i would also be stressed. there is a kind of cement here... i will try to send a picture here... that is very strong. it has fiber mixed in and i used it on a crack on my retaining wall. at first, on the retaining wall, the crack would come back if i just used wall cement. now, it hasn't shown up yet... cross my fingers. I opened up the crack and filled it in. maybe that could be a solution. i will try to upload the photo later today.

 

cheers

[Pouatchee]

9 hours ago, Kalasin Jo said:

Regularly filled with ready mixed plaster filler over about 18 months until it stopped reopening for about 6 years ....but it's started opening again recently once the rain season ended.

 

Try this

 

[Kalasin Jo]

8 hours ago, Pouatchee said:

nah man. not too long. interesting

Thanks. I was a complete newbie to building projects back then. learnt slot since! I've copied the photo you posted. Cheers mate.

[Pouatchee]

1 hour ago, Kalasin Jo said:

Thanks. I was a complete newbie to building projects back then. learnt slot since! I've copied the photo you posted. Cheers mate.

 

you have to be quick when you mix. it dries and hardens really fast. mix a little... apply... repeat. i would start at the bottom of the crack