How To Solve Recurring Ceiling Cracks

Contrary to what many homeowners believe, recurring ceiling cracks are quit common. They can be caused by various types of problems that are normally associated with moisture. Moisture found in home foundations can lead to this but in most situations we are faced with moisture problems that appear in your attic. Obviously, fixing moisture problems is usually the solution that you are looking for and a specialist can easily identify the source of the moisture presence.

Occasionally, you have roof truss problems that are connected. The Trusses are created to carry roof weight towards outer walls, roof ends. When a seasonal crack will open in an outer wall, it is possible to end up with trusses that are arching. That leads to constant cracks appearing.

Foundation problems that lead to recurring ceiling cracks appear when under wall footings do not have a suitable depth. During the cold winters, outer walls can end up lifted due to thaw-freeze cycles. Moisture condition changes in heavy clay soil will easily lift walls. However, this leads to the cracks only after the appearance of floor cracks, gaps or wall cracks or gaps.

Truss uplift or truss arching shows up as slight truss bowing, normally during winters. Moisture that would escape inside the attic during cold weather periods will usually end up being absorbed by top chords, leading to slight expansions. Bottom chords do not expand as they are buried close to ceilings that are warm and insulation. We thus have slight warps as in one side we have damp warps while in the other side we have dryness. As weather dries off, warp disappears but cracks remain.

Solving cracks in the ceiling is usually as simple as removing attic humidity. This is really easy to do when you close air leaks that appear in the ceiling. At the same time, you need to install attic ventilation, making sure that it is unobstructed.

Another solution we can highlight is that you should not nail ceiling drywalls to trusses at around 16 inches from a wall. You need to support edges by simply attaching these to the blocks that are nailed to wall framing tops or to some drywall clips that are especially attached to the home’s walls. Trusses end up freed to simply flex a little upward, with cracks disappearing.