If you’re like the majority of the population, when you see cracked walls in your home, you are bound to feel panicked. Ultimately, wall cracks, whether interior or exterior, can be a tell-tale sign of sign of structural damage, building faults, sinking or damaged foundation and some can be absolutely nothing to worry about. If you choose not to address
Are wall cracks sign of a structural issue?
As a rule of thumb, any hairline crack in plaster or paintwork can generally be attributed to seasonal expansion and contraction – In other words, get some putty and paint and your wall will look good as new.
Larger cracks on the other hand can be more cause for concern. If the cracks start from a corner of a building, window or door, they may indicate some foundation weaknesses.
Some easy things to look for are:
- Is the wall sloping, ie one side is higher than the other
- Windows and doors are hard to close and scrape along the frame
- Cracks are larger than 0.5cm are genuinely look ominous
How we fix these cracks
When homes are built, the land is nice and flat and everything lines up perfectly. Over time though, the ground beneath the home shifts, sinks, moves and is simply in a different place from when the structure was first erected causing the cracks and jammed doors. Therefore, the best solution is to bring things back to how they once were, by levelling, lifting and supporting the structure through a process known as underpinning. By shifting everything back in to place, those large cracks will just be small cracks needed a bit of putty and paint to look beautiful again.
Traditional underpinning methods typically meant lots of excavation work and weeks, if not months, of mess and disruption to your home/building and potentially having to vacate while work is being completed.
BMC Microfine specialises in an underpinning method which is cost and time efficient as well as being minimally disruptive to the building and surrounding environment.
Benefits of underpinning and levelling a structure
- Using our grout injection technology, there is no mess, no disruption to your home and no further damage to the environment
- No need to tear up floors and excavate ground, we inject directly underneath the foundation.
- Most jobs are done in a single day
Commercial/Industrial Buildings with Cracked Walls
Our microfine grout injection technology is suitable for buildings of all shapes and sizes. A large percentage of our clients are commercial and industrial businesses looking for an alternative solution to more time consuming traditional underpinning processes. The main benefit of our solution relies on our minimally disruptive techniques which ensures work can continue and staff are not disturbed.