Cracks in rendering

[Gaygle]

Hi all,

Just bought a new house which is around 7 years old.

It is timber framed and has rendering over it, with brick at the bottom of the house. I've noticed that there are quite a lot of hairline cracks over the rendering on the front and side of the house.

Now, I don't know a lot about building etc, but can these be repaired? Most of them are very hairline in that you can see them, but you couldn't really fit anything in between them, but there is a vertical one on the corner of the house which is around the thickness of a credit card.

The worst ones (only 2):
http://imgur.com/P80F4eH
http://imgur.com/phT1g2d

The medium ones(about 4):
http://imgur.com/3Al7uPB

The minor ones (15 or so):
http://imgur.com/u3JYrgJ

 

[Gaygle]

do you have any movement joints fitted to the external walls anywhere? (10 mm gap filled with mastic running top to bottom of the wall).

Nope, not that i can see. I'm guessing that allows for and absorbs small movement without cracking the solid rendering?

Timber frames move, settle and shrink. I'm surprised they rendered it. Not a very good choice of construction methods.

So do all houses when they're new tbh. It's a cottage style so the only real option tbh.

Done properly there's nothing wrong with that method

I agree - think it may have been rushed/done by idiots. TBH though, the cracks aren't terminal, there is only a couple of bigger ones, but the vast majority are such small/hairline cracks you couldn't even fit anything in between them.

not 100% on this but don't new builds have a 'warranty' of 10 years (could be wrong on number of years)... this might fall under that although not sure if thats transferred to new owners etc

If covered by an insurance policy like NHBC/Zurich etc, but this was covered by an architects certificate instead, which only lasts for 6 years... and 6 years was up in 5 months ago I'm not too bothered though, from hearing from other people, architects/insurance companies only get involved when there is serious structural defects. They would in all likelihood dismiss mine as just settling minor cracking.

Derek, you seem to know about this sort of stuff. Is it possible for a builder/renderer to remove a small amount of rendering and repair the section? There is one corner of the house about about 1.5 metres tall (Z axis), and 20cm on the X and Y axis of the corner which looks as though it could fall in the future.