These cracks will grow and shrink seasonally. Because of the differential shrinkage, you end up with sticky doors and drywall cracks. Drywall, doors, windows, and other house components do not shrink that much. I did a calculation once and was shocked to discover that a two-story frame house can shrink as much as two inches from top to bottom as the wood dries to its ultimate moisture content. But the plates and sills that lie horizontally on the top and bottom of the studs, the floor joists, and the ceiling joists can shrink quite a lot. Studs don’t shrink much along their length since that direction is parallel to the grain of the wood. The wood fibers move closer together as the moisture leaves. The wood shrinks most in the direction perpendicular to the grain. The wood joists, rafters, sill plates, and even the studs the house that are the framing of the house will shrink as they lose moisture. The reason new houses develop so called “settlement” cracks is because they actually shrink. Settlement Cracks Are Actually Your House Shrinking But houses usually change shape for other reasons. Actual settlement, or soil subsidence can happen, especially in clay soils. It probably has not actually done that unless the basement construction was very badly designed and built or the soils were not inspected or tested before the footings were poured. They think their foundation has failed and believe this happened because the foundation has settled into the earth. They have doors that stick and drywall with cracks. You often hear people refer to settlement cracks in their house. Settlement in a house is a misconception. That’s what you want when building a basement. Undisturbed soil will not compact under the weight of the house. The soil particles have become tightly packed. It was compacted by Mother Nature with gravity over a long, long time. No one has dug it up and filled it back in. Undisturbed soil is soil that has been in place for thousands of years. Foundation and building footings must be placed on solid ground, or what’s called undisturbed soil. Good basement construction starts with solid, strong soils.
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