Property Maintenance in Redhill (RH1)
Redhill has three broad ages of housing and all three crack, but not for the same reasons. A crack is information before it is a defect, and the useful thing is knowing which ones need watching, which need a repair, and which need nothing done at all.
What a crack is telling you
Most cracks in a house are not structural.
Plaster shrinks, different materials expand at different rates, and every building settles. The ones worth attention have a pattern: they run diagonally rather than along a joint, they are wider at one end than the other, they go through the wall rather than through the finish on it, and they carry on through the brickwork outside as well as the plaster inside. Cracks that open in summer and close again in winter usually point to ground movement rather than to the building. The sensible first step is often not a repair at all — it is a record. Photograph it, measure it, mark the ends with a date, and look again in a few months. A crack that has stopped moving is a repair job. A crack that is still moving needs its cause dealt with before anybody fills anything.
The three ages of Redhill house
The Victorian terraces near the station and out towards Earlswood are solid-walled with shallow foundations by modern standards, and movement often shows at the junction between the main house and the rear addition, which was built lighter than the house it joins. The 1930s semi belt has habits of its own: a bay front sits on its own foundation and can settle differently to the rest of the house, and long runs of render crack whether or not anything has moved behind them. The newer estate housing around Whitebushes and Salfords tends to crack at the finish — plasterboard joints, shrinkage above openings, thin-coat render where materials change. Reading each of those correctly is what stops a straightforward job being sold as a serious one, or the reverse.
Repairing a crack so that it stays repaired
Filling a crack in plaster and painting over it lasts until the next seasonal cycle.
A repair that holds means dealing with what sits behind it: cutting out and stitching brickwork where a crack is genuinely open, replacing a failed lintel or bearing where that is the cause, cutting plaster back to sound material rather than skimming across it, and allowing for the small movement that will always happen. We would rather tell you a crack needs watching for six months than take money for a repair we know will reopen, and where a job needs a structural engineer's input we will say so plainly rather than guess at it.
More in Redhill
Everything we do in Redhill is on the Redhill area sheet, and the full detail of how we approach this trade is on the building maintenance page.
Common questions
Q.01How do I know if a crack is serious?
Width, direction, and whether it shows on the inside and the outside. Diagonal cracks that are wider at one end and carry through the brickwork are worth a proper look; hairline cracks along plaster joints usually are not.
Q.02Should I fill it now or wait?
If it is still moving, waiting is the right answer. Mark and date the ends, photograph it and look again after a season, because filling a live crack only hides the evidence you need.
Q.03The crack is above my bay window. Is that common?
It happens on interwar houses, because a bay sits on its own foundation and can move slightly differently to the main wall. Whether it matters depends on how far it has gone, which is why we look rather than assume.
Q.04Do you do the repair as well as the diagnosis?
Yes. Brickwork repairs, stitching, replastering and making good are our own team's work, and we price the repair item by item once we have seen it. Ring 01883 337 700.
Q.05Which trades are yours and which are brought in?
Ours are the building trades: bricklayers, carpenters, plasterers and groundworkers, on our own books since 2005. Electrics, roofing and decorating are specialist trades and we do not pretend otherwise. We bring those in, price them, run them on site and stay answerable for the finish, so you are never left booking a second firm to finish a repair.
Thinking about building maintenance in Redhill?
Tell us what you are planning. We come out, look at the job properly and give you a price for it.