Concrete Cracking in Basement

[lenorehig]

I have a questions regarding concrete cracking in my daughter's home. My daughter owns a condo at Waukewan Condos in Meredith. Her first level is garage and utility room/basement. Walk up second level is main living area, kitchen etc. On tuesday a crack appeared in her basement floor. It's about 6 feet in length and goes all the way to the wall separating the next unit. She has a lot of standing water outside her back door, usually until april/may so the drainage is terrible. I am not an expert but I would imagine the cracking is due to some sort of frost heaves with all of the cold weather recently. Any suggestions on who to call to evaluate any possible structural damage? If it does require repair would the homeowner's association be responsible if it is caused by poor maintenance? Thanks for any suggestions.

[Kamper]

I suggest it be reported to the property management office.

Even though this is 'inside' the unit, the association may be responsible for this type of structural repair.

Also, it may indicate a problem that could involve other units and it is possible it is a symptom of a more serious problem.

Most likely though, it can be fixed with a couple tubes of cement fix from Home Depot.

[Slickcraft]

It could be caused by hydrostatic pressure; a combination of water under the concrete and poor or non-existent perimeter drainage. If it is a dry crack, I would report it but not worry about it.

Alan

[LIforrelaxin]

As previously suggested, get the management office involved. Often times in area's like this, ownership of the problem becomes a bit ambiguous. Once the problem and cause are understood then ownership becomes a bit clearer. Once the problem is understood it also becomes clearer as to weather or not insurance is involved.

In the documentation and deed for the condo, it is spelled out as to who the owner of various elements of the structure are. With out seeing the documents it is impossible to comment.... with that said foundations are usually the responsibility of the association. However what constitutes the foundation could be interpreted differently based on the documentation. For example the foundation could be simply be the foundation walls, and the slab with in is treated differently.

Now some things to think about in regards to this crack....
- Is there water coming into the basement because of this?
- Is the crack continuing to grow?
- beyond being esthetically unpleasing is it causing any other issue?
All of these things and more should be documented, including all correspondence with the association, because if it becomes a mater of finger pointing and lawyers and courts need to get involved to settle out ownership, you want to be able to provide a documented account of it all....

With that all said, I have seen similar situations in condo's I have owned.... The process can move slowly, but in the end all parties usually end up happy. In the case I was involved, the condos where garden style.... the ground floor units where built on the slab, the slabs settled unevenly in several units....The slabs where considered part of the foundation and thus the associations issue.... however to fix the issue, flooring etc needed to be disturbed which was a unit owner issue....There was some bargaining back and forth between the owners and association, but in the end the association stated they would provide x amount of dollars towards the flooring, if the owners wanted something beyond the choices that the the association was going to pay for and have installed as part of the project.

[DesertDweller]

As others have said, definitely report it to the management company. I would strongly suspect it's included in the association property. Depending on the age of the property they may go after the original contractor to fix it. A lot of contractors won't touch building condo's for this reason.

[lenorehig]

Thank you everyone for your suggestions and replies. I will follow up with my daughter and see how she wants to proceed. There is no drainage, her back area is a swamp until late spring. I have read in the HOA minutes from the last 2 years that they were pursuing a company to alleviate the drainage condition. She sent me a video yesterday and it looks dry.

[TiltonBB]

It would be interesting to know the age of the concrete and the spacing and depth of the control joints.

Concrete is sold by it's compressive strength, not it's tensile strength. When concrete comes out of the truck it is at it's highest volume. As it dries, it shrinks, just like your clothes. A typical rule of thumb is the volume and surface will contract about 1/4 inch for every 20 feet. The control joints put in right after placement are just to show it where to crack and will look much better than a jagged crack. The control joints should be cut 1/3 of the depth of the concrete. Sometimes floors without joints are connected by rebar to the walls and have no way to absorb the shrinkage. The resulting cracking from contraction is pretty bad.

In cold climates the concrete is entrained with air, usually 4 - 6%. That is, microscopic invisible air bubbles to help with expansion and contraction. That was not done with concrete many years ago and led to a lot of cracking and spalling. If the concrete was placed with internal steel rebar that could be rusting and causing cracks also.

There are many companies that will repair concrete with epoxy that has some ability to expand and contract. If you have identified the cause, and eliminated it, you may be able to hide the cracks with epoxy and forget about them.