So, a couple of months after moving in to our new (rented) house in London, my flatmates and I started noticing cracks in the ceiling of the living room, which is the floor of my bedroom, and in my bedroom’s ceiling. Unless I’m mistaken, these babies have been getting bigger, and there are more of them. Looking at the ceilings of both rooms, you’d notice that they’re sagging in the centre. This is an old house with wooden floors and ceilings. The landlord’s response was ‘that’s always been there’- not the most comforting answer. I want a more professional opinion. Is there a way of forcing the landlord to have a structural engineer take a look at the house?
I presume it is a terraced house. On the walls it is almost certainly harmless - the dry summers and wet winters and general temperature swings make cracking in plaster wall houses a certainty. Unless the crack gets so big you could say put a finger into then I wouldnt worry. If it was a problem one would suppose the landlord would be worried about his house.
However ceilings may be different. Take a photograph and try to get a proper measurement of the cracks and sagging. Compare in a month. It is pretty easy to suddenly see something and convince your self it only just arrived when it was there all the time
from an owner with lots of cracks
I live in a climate with dry winters and semi-humid summers. The cracks appear in the winter, get bigger and bigger and bigger, and disappear in the summer. This is especially true of plaster walls/ceilings, but it happens with drywall as well.
The first time we noticed it in our previous house, which had plaster walls, we were freaked out like you. But after the second year of big cracks coming and going, we hardly even noticed it anymore.
I was thinking that maybe after noticing the first crack, we started looking more carefully and found smaller, less noticable ones. But I don’t think so. A civil engineer friend of mine -admittedly, a young one with little experience- took one look at the ceiling and suggested we arrange for a visit from a stuctural engineer. He’s been to the house several times and does think that it is sagging more than it should be, and said so without anyone even asking. So I’d rather, for personal peace of mind if for nothing else, have a professional look at this. Is the landlord required to get said professional? Can this be done through the council? That’s what I really need to know.
Hmmm. Yeah, it could be a seasonal thing, I haven’t lived here long enough to know. But the landlord never actually mentioned that explanation. He just dismissed the whole thing.
Given the state of disrepair the house was in when we first moved, I am not inclined to take that sort of answer from him. For example, he insisted the boiler was fine, and sent a plumber who works for him to make the same claim, only to have a CORGI engineer visit a month later and declare the thing unsafe and force him to replace it.
I would
(i) write a formal letter to the landlord informing him of the situation
and if that does nothing inform the council
from http://www.edgehill.ac.uk/Sites/StuServices/accommodation/repairs.htm
In addition, property owners’ are expected to keep their property up to a standard ‘fit for human habitation’. In fact Under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 the local authorities have the legal power to take court action against any property which provides poor living conditions. As stipulated in the The Housing Act 1996, local councils have the authority to take action against any properties that are a statutory nuisance. For a property to be defined as a statutory nuisance there should be a number of faults, or be in such a condition that they are effecting the comfort of the tenants. Examples of faults that cause statutory nuisance are as follows,
* Major structural problems i.e. subsidence and dilapidated brickwork
* Dry rot
* Burst pipes
* Falling plaster
* Damp or mould growth or condensation
* Leaking roof
* Faulty windows
* Faulty or dangerous wiring
* Infestations (mice, rats, lice, etc.)
If a property owner refuses to carry out essential work in the property you live then you should seek help from your local council. The Local Council can serve repair notices on a property owner to ensure that specific repairs are carried out by a specified date. If a property owner failed to respond to this notice the local council can arrange for external contractors to complete the repair and transfer the costs to the owner. The property owner can appeal against this decision but non-compliance to the notice could lead to legal prosecution.
Hmmm, ceilings shouldn’t sag in the centre, not even in old British houses. It’s probably a sign that one or more of the wooden joists is broken, but is being partly braced by adjacent joists and floorboards so at least the whole lot doesn’t collapse.
Get someone to jump up and down a bit on the floor above, and you should be able to see any obvious points of weakness.
I have a 170 year old house, more or less, and it has a couple of rooms with pretty much what you describe – sagging ceiling and cracks that appear and disappear. I spent a fair amount of time worrying about it, but nothing has ever happened. But without looking at it, it’s hard to tell how bad it is.
You might try getting access to the attic and examining the ceiling of the bedroom.
However, unless you’ve got a waterbed or a lot of heavy furniture in the bedroom, I’d be inclined to wait and see. It’s unlikely that the contents of the bedroom are suddenly going to one day end up in the living room. The failure mode is more likely that some large chunk o’ plaster will someday detach. Now this wouldn’t be a good thing as plaster is darned heavy and it could break something or ding someone pretty good. But I don’t think a floor in a wood timber house will ever just collapse unless it was completely shoddy to begin with. Certainly not without considerable groaning and warning ahead of time.
Well, that’s a possibility, but it’s more likely that the joist has just sagged noticeably over the years. Joists were often ludicrously under-sized in the old days and the spacing was a lot larger. Without any joists actually being broken, I’ve had sagging of two or three inches in some of my floors.
Warning, TMI:
I’ll start with the written communique, and use registered post and keep a copy for myself. If this fails, I just found the address of my council. I’ll definitely notify them.
I’m still concerned about one thing. As I said above, when we thought the boiler was unsafe and said as much, the landlord sent a plumber that worked for him to say it was fine. A visit from a CORGI engineer cleared that and got us a new boiler. Is there something similar to CORGI certification for this sort of repairs?
And thanks for the help everyone 
For what it’s worth, the cracks are focused in the center, but are spread out in all four corners, in both rooms. The ceiling is sagging in both rooms, particularly in the living room. There are cracks there that form a very rectangular shape (evidence of a heavy object that was once there?) , in addition to a multitude of others in all forms and sizes. The most sagging part is adjacent to the rectangle but is not part of it.