About and sources
A field book for the buyer's side of the viewing.
Sellers paint over cracks; inspectors see a house once, after you have already fallen for it. Buying Crack Book gives you a way to write cracks down properly at every viewing, read them against published guidance and walk into the inspection with the right questions.
What it does and does not do
A reading of published guidance, not an inspection. Buying Crack Book cannot see the house and never tells you a house is fine. Hire a qualified home inspector (licensed where your state requires it), and a structural engineer when the reading says so. The reader works from what you type: it cannot tell you why a crack is there, whether it is still moving, or what a repair would cost. Those are questions for a qualified home inspector (licensed where your state requires it), a structural engineer and, for foundations, sometimes a soils engineer.
The reader never calls a house safe, sound or unsafe. It reports a width band, the notes the sources give for that kind of crack, and a flag when the sources point to a professional.
Sources
- BRE Digest 251, "Assessment of damage in low-rise buildings, including guidance on the classification of visible damage" (Building Research Establishment, UK, revised 1995). The 0-to-5 category names and typical crack widths used here are as widely reproduced from its classification table; the Digest itself is a paid BRE publication and is not reproduced. The Digest says width is only one factor in the category.
- BRE Group, "Assessing cracks in houses" (bregroup.com, 15 April 2014): categories 0 to 2 (widths up to 5 mm) are aesthetic and usually need only redecoration; 3 and 4 are serviceability (weather-tightness, doors and windows); 5 is stability, likely to need structural work; whether widths grow over time can change the classification.
- Ben Gromicko and Nick Gromicko, "Inspecting Foundation Walls and Piers", International Association of Certified Home Inspectors (InterNACHI), revised January 2013: the pattern notes on horizontal and sweeping cracks, settlement and tapering cracks, shrinkage cracks in block walls, offset edges at additions, clean versus dirty crack edges and the signs of differential settlement.
- ISO/IEC 7810, ID-1 card size 85.60 x 53.98 mm: used only to check that the printable card printed at true size.
BRE Digest 251 is written for the United Kingdom and InterNACHI for North American inspectors; building practice differs by country and era. Neither organisation is connected with this site or has reviewed it.
Who runs it
Buying Crack Book is an independent site run by WeldonPC (Ohio, United States). It has no link to any inspector, engineer, contractor, lender, insurer or estate agent, and takes no referral fees.