Are some foundation cracks better than others?

  Recently, at a home show, I heard someone say that a “stair step” crack was better to have than a straight vertical one. I noticed she was looking at one of our pop up banners that shows both kinds of wall cracks. This comment struck me as odd and unfortunately I was engaged with another patron and wasn’t able to get to this lady before she walked on. I’d like to take this opportunity to help people understand why this statement is so troubling.

ALL foundation cracks are bad

  To start, no foundation cracks are good. When a concrete block wall is built to support the weight of the house, it is held up by what is known as a compressive load. This means that for the wall to be most effective, it has to be perfectly straight both up and down as well as side to side. Once that wall starts to buckle or bow inward it will lose a little of its strength. Basically if you see a crack in your basement wall, you should get it fixed. If there was a nice easy handbook to tell what a wall crack means, everyone would be fixing walls like DryZone. It takes a lot of training and studying to learn how to diagnose and fix a basement wall crack. Also, we often get asked things like “how bad can a crack get before the wall breaks?” There is no standard of measure for how big wall cracks have to be just before the wall caves in. We like to tell people that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It is so much easier to fix a basement wall before it caves in, far less invasive too.

In conclusion

  To sum up, no wall crack is a good wall crack. The inspection is free, so why not get a qualified inspector out to look at the wall before it falls apart. DryZone is waiting for your call.

On a side note, both of the wall cracks shown in this blog are from the same wall in the same basement.

DryZone serves Wicomico, Kent, Sussex, New Castle, Dorchester, Worcester, Talbot, Somerset, and Queen Annes counties.