Cracks over doors and windows in Manchester, NH
Seasonal, structural, or just old tape
A crack that starts at the upper corner of a door or window and runs up at an angle is the single most common thing we get asked about, and the honest answer is that it can mean three completely different things. Most are seasonal and cosmetic. A few are old workmanship. A small number are the house telling you something structural, and those are worth knowing about before anybody hides the evidence.
The corner of an opening is where a wall is weakest — the framing is interrupted there and stress concentrates at the angle — so it is where any movement in the building shows up first.
The seasonal kind
Between November and April, heating drops indoor humidity into the teens and framing lumber gives up moisture and shrinks. Come July the air is thick again and everything swells back. That annual cycle opens hairline cracks at door and window corners across half the housing in this city. They are narrow, they do not step or offset, and they often close slightly in summer. They are cosmetic. They will, however, keep reopening until somebody repairs them with tape rather than filler.
The workmanship kind
A ruler-straight crack that runs vertically or horizontally, rather than diagonally from a corner, is usually a drywall seam whose tape was starved of compound or never properly bedded when the house was built. Common in fast subdivision work from the eighties onward out toward Londonderry and Hooksett. The old tape gets cut out, new tape goes in properly bedded, and the joint is built up in stages until it is invisible.
The kind worth worrying about
Get a second opinion from a structural engineer or foundation contractor before repairing a crack that is wider than about a quarter inch, that steps or offsets so one side sits proud of the other, that keeps growing month to month, or that arrives at the same time as doors binding in their frames and floors going out of level. Those point at the foundation or a framing member, and no amount of tape addresses them. We will tell you if we think that is what we are looking at.
Why tape and not filler
This is the whole difference between a repair that lasts a decade and one that lasts a season. Compound is a smoothing material with essentially no tensile strength — it cannot hold two things together across a moving joint. Paper tape bedded into wet compound can. The tape does the structural work and the compound applied over it in successive wider passes does the hiding. Fill a crack straight from the tube and you have decorated it, not repaired it.
Cracks in plaster behave differently
In a pre-war house, a crack with a slight ridge along one side usually means the plaster has separated from its lath in that area, and taping over it just spans a section that is no longer attached to anything. Those get re-secured first, mechanically, before any surface work — see crumbling plaster.
Repairing several at once
Cracks are rarely singular. If the house has opened up one door corner it has usually opened three or four, plus a ceiling seam somewhere. It is markedly cheaper to have them all dealt with in one visit than to call about each as it annoys you, because the setup, the dust control and the travel are the same either way. Rates for a room of them are on what it costs.
Often turns up alongside
People dealing with Cracks over doors and windows usually also ask about our a hole in the wall service, professional a brown stain on the ceiling and a ceiling that sags or bows services — call and we'll tell you which one your job needs.
Towns we cover
We take this work across the Merrimack Valley, including drywall repair in Bedford, Goffstown drywall repair calls, serving Hooksett, drywall repair for Londonderry property owners, Derry, drywall repair in Auburn, Candia drywall repair calls, serving Merrimack, drywall repair for Litchfield property owners, Bow, drywall repair in Concord and Nashua drywall repair calls, and the surrounding communities.
Send a photo of it
A photo of the damage is usually enough for a number the same day.
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