Local guide

Stucco on Newer Tradition Homes: Settlement Cracks and Warranty

New houses crack while they finish curing and settling. On a recent Tradition build the first call should be to the builder's warranty line, not to a contractor.

A two year old house with a crack over the garage

It is one of the most common calls we take from Tradition. The house is barely out of its wrapper, the landscaping is still young, and there is a crack running up out of the garage door corner or above a bedroom window. The first thing worth saying is that on a new Florida house this is normal far more often than it is a defect.

Tradition is a newer master planned part of Port St. Lucie, out on the western side of the city, and much of it is recent enough that houses are still in their first movement cycle. Cement plaster shrinks as it cures and keeps at it for months after the crew has gone. Fresh framing dries out. Fill and landscaping settle around the slab.

So the question on a house this age is not whether it will crack. It is which kind of crack you have, and who is supposed to pay for it.

Shrinkage, thermal and settlement do not look alike

Shrinkage cracking is fine and often web like across a wall field, and it stops changing once the wall has finished curing. Thermal cracking appears on the elevations that cook, usually south and west, and it opens and closes very slightly through the day as the wall heats and cools.

Settlement is the one homeowners worry about, and it has a different handwriting. It tends to widen toward one end rather than holding an even hair width, and sometimes the two sides are no longer in the same plane, so you can feel a small lip when you drag a finger across it. It often arrives alongside a door or window that has stopped latching cleanly.

Stress cracks off the corners of openings sit between the two. They are extremely common on new construction, they are usually not structural, and they still deserve a proper repair because a crack beside a window perimeter puts water right where the flashing and sealant live.

• Fine or map cracking in a wall field: shrinkage, monitor and coat
• Diagonal out of a window or garage corner: stress, repair it properly
• Even hairline that has not changed in a year: stable, leave it alone
• Widening at one end, or with a lip you can feel: get it looked at
• Cracks plus doors and windows binding: engineer first, plasterer second

Read the warranty before you pay anybody

This is the most valuable paragraph on the page for a Tradition homeowner. On a recent build there is a fair chance the crack you are looking at is somebody else's responsibility. Builder warranties commonly separate workmanship, systems and structural coverage, each with its own term and its own claim procedure, and those terms differ from builder to builder and contract to contract.

Nobody can tell you what yours says except your own paperwork. Find the warranty booklet from closing. Find the claim procedure. Find the deadline. Many warranty programmes require written notice within a stated period, and many require the builder to be given the opportunity to inspect and to repair before anyone else touches the wall.

That last point is the trap. Hiring your own contractor to fix something still covered can end the claim outright. Call the builder's warranty line first, even when you expect to be told no, and get whatever they tell you in writing.

• Locate the warranty documents from closing before making any calls
• Note the term for each coverage type and the deadline for giving notice
• Follow the written claim procedure exactly, and submit in writing
• Let the builder inspect first where the documents require it
• Keep copies of everything sent and every answer received

Document it the way a claim wants it documented

Whether the claim succeeds or not, documentation costs nothing and takes minutes. Photograph the crack straight on with a tape measure or a coin beside it for scale. Note the date. Take a wide shot as well, showing where on the house the crack sits. Then take the identical photograph from the identical spot six months later.

Two dated photographs from the same position settle arguments that no amount of description can. A crack that has finished moving looks the same in both. One that is still working is obvious side by side, and that comparison is precisely what a warranty administrator, an engineer or an adjuster wants to see.

Keep a plain log with it. Date, location, width, and anything unusual the weather has done. It feels fussy for a hairline crack. It is also the difference between a claim taken seriously and a phone call about a crack.

Why an imperfect patch shows more in Tradition than anywhere else

Older neighbourhoods hide repairs. Weathered walls, varied colours, coarse textures and mature landscaping all give a patch somewhere to disappear into. A newer street does the opposite. Elevations repeat down the block, the colours are close to one another, the textures are flat and even, and the walls have not yet been softened by twenty years of sun.

On that kind of wall a slightly heavier knockdown, or half a shade of difference in the coating, reads clearly from the sidewalk. It would be the same quality of repair that vanishes on a 1970s sand finish in Fort Pierce. Here it looks like a bruise on the front of the house.

The practical consequence is scope. On uniform newer walls it is usually better to finish a full plane, corner to corner, than to feather a patch into the middle of an elevation. It costs a little more on the invoice and considerably less at resale.

When the warranty is out, or the builder declines

It happens, and it is not a disaster. Out of warranty crack work on a newer home is usually straightforward, because the wall behind the finish is young and the substrate is normally sound. The work is routing the crack, filling it, meshing where the width warrants, matching the texture and coating a defined area so the repair ends at a natural line.

Two findings change that picture. Cracks that keep reopening in the same line after a correct repair point at movement rather than at plaster, and that is a question for a Florida licensed structural engineer rather than a stucco crew. Hollow sound, staining or a bulge points at water or corrosion behind the surface, and the only way to price that is to open a small area and look.

Before hiring anyone, verify the licence. Florida contractor licences are issued and published by the Department of Business and Professional Regulation and can be looked up by name or licence number, which takes less time than reading a single review. Ask for the insurance certificate to come directly from the insurer rather than as a photograph on a phone.

What to watch in the first five years

A new house settles in and then stops. The point of watching is not anxiety. It is catching the small number of things genuinely worth acting on while a warranty may still cover them, and handling the maintenance that decides how the wall ages.

• Cracks that widen, lengthen, or reopen after they have been repaired
• Any crack with rust staining, blistering or a hollow sound beside it
• Stucco that sounds dull when tapped, especially under window sills
• Sealant at windows, doors and wall penetrations drying out or splitting
• Sprinkler heads throwing water at the wall, and mulch stacked against the stucco
• Downspouts discharging at the base of a wall instead of away from the house