ceiling crack
 

my home is 3 years old , should i contact home warranty about my lanai ceiling crack.

Read the POA finding, it's a joke the engineering report.
My lanai and garage are both insulated from day one and i have cracks. They should of used mesh tape from the beginning and a better quality of drywall compound mix.
It is the product and poor workmanship and lack of knowledge.
There needs to be a class action lawsuit.
I repaired mine with mess tape and a mix of durabond and mud and it has held up much better than the repairs the village did.
Lets see how much trouble this gets me in!

The warranty on your home was one year and during that year they will only come once to repair sheet rock or stucco problems. Getting the crack repaired is very easy. Just get some sheet rock mud at the store, take your finger and smooth it over the crack. Then tape a paint brush to a long broom handle and paint over it. If you can afford a house in TV you should be able to get a handyman to repair if you cannot do yourself.

I have been waiting to repair to see if anything comes of the POA inquiry into this matter with the developer.

I had them come out and 'repair' mine within the year of the Warranty. They simply slathered a thick layer of flexible mud on the cracks, painted it, and left.

Of course the cracks came back and they are now on top of a thick layer of added on mud. It is worse than before.

I think that you really need to sand down the texture, wet all the joints, pull off the tape, re-tape with mesh tape, re-mud, re-texture, and re-paint.

No easy answers.

yes i can do all that but the crack will come back.

Can you believe there is any validity to poor workmanship ? I have only heard of 100's of people making this same claim. Contact the POA and give them more ammunition to help out this situation. Lanai's are the main living area of many houses here. Making any excuse for this is BS. Keep making noise you have been short sheeted.

I had the Sumter county. bldg. inspector come to my home and look at the cracks, his opinion was the seams were not taped properly. I asked why did they approve the work and he said they do not inspect the work in the villages they have their own inspectors. My concern is the fire protection inside the garage could be jeopardized. Which would be a code violation

Cracked Lanai Ceilings
 

Me too! Haven't heard anything further regarding POA action since engineer looked into it. Few months? Wonder if it's just been dropped.

Ceilings (both the lanai and garage) are looking worse and worse. The first repair didn't hold very long.

I have had the same problem. Had it repaired twice. The dry waller said it will happen again. There is no stud under the seam. It is just taped and mud applied. I’m as well waiting for POA.

I am a roof truss manufacturer from Illinois. We deal with these drywall crack issues every year. My guess is the cold weather we had here in the Villages a month ago had a lot to do with these drywall cracks appearing. When the bottom chord of the trusses are insulated and warm and the top chords and webs are not during an extreme temperature change they will expand and contract therefore causing drywall cracks at the weakest point. The reason these cracks appear along the seams every 4 feet is not due to bad tape, its due to 2nd or 3rd coats of mud being applied to soon in high humidity. If you do some research on USG drywall installation you will find that in high humidity you should not apply an additional coat of mud to a joint for 2-3 days. My best guess is due to the limited time frame these contractors have, that procedure was not practiced.

Now I will explain in detail the repair that has worked for me on some of the houses I built in Illinois. I have a very good drywall contractor with 30+ years experience. He slightly grooved the drywall crack and reapplied a Quickset 90 drywall mud, feathered out approximately 6 inches wide. After 2 days he lightly sanded it and used a special sponge to dab the texture and make it match the existing texture, which is very tedious and hard to do. Then it was repainted and it turned out beautiful and has held up 2 years now with no cracks.

Steve Kling Painting repaired ours in 2016 when they repainted the house. So far, so good.

There HAS to be a stud behind EVERY seam! The installers were incompetent or just didn't care.

This statement is right on the mark.

The drywallers can’t nail onto a stud that isn’t there. Blame the General Contractor and or the framers and or the architect. Bottom line, the GC is at fault.


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So, the fastest build is not the best build? :lipsrsealed:

Keep reporting these cracks to the POA. I'll bet they are in the data collection mode. It will be interesting to see if they are collecting the data by house location, year built, model, etc. The wrong answer is this is to be expected because of being exposed to outdoors. A cold day here is in the high 20's. For years I have closed my house up north with no heat (drain pipes) and temps reach minus 30 and only had one hairline crack. That was due to over five feet of snow on the roof.

March 2018 POA Bulletin
 

The March 2018 POA Bulletin found on driveways today contains an extensive report on this.

http://www.poa4us.org/bulletins_file...etin201803.pdf

Not good news for those with the problem.

Interesting article - thanks for sharing.Were any of you new home purchasers offered the option of having insulation in the garage or lanai. Did the houses built before 2009 come with insulation standard ? Those of you that enclosed your lanai did the contractor insulate that area ? I would like to know what the developer plans to do with future homes. Will these areas be insulated and joints upgraded. That brings us back to the quality conversation. Meeting code is a requirement. Doesn't make you a good guy. It must be done. Thank goodness the codes here in Florida are pretty good. But there is a difference between code and quality.

Sometimes a huge difference...

For those who have not read the ceiling crack article a couple points of interest the POA calls out:
1 more than 1000 homeowners contacted them saying they have the problem
2 30 out of 50 homes in Lake Deaton have reported the problem
Can you imagine how big this problem really is ! Should not be swept under the rug - not ethical.

We had our home built, almost 5 years ago, I do not recall any discussion about additional insulation in the garage or lanai. After reading the POA article I am guessing that we (home owners) will not be getting any repairs on these cracks. I am going to attempt my own repair with a flexible and paintable caulk or similar material. My hope is that this material will stretch and shrink enough to not crack. No idea if this will work, but I will also do some additional research for other ideas.

It doesn't matter if there is insulation or not. Drywall that is installed in a way that there is not a stud behind every seam is installed improperly. The cost of the repairs should not fall on the home owner.

New Englander is right! The Villages knows what the problem is. Will they fix it, who knows.

I had a crack in my kitchen ceiling that Warranty sent out 3 different guys to repair, and each one said "no problem, I'll fix this so it looks like nothing ever happened"! HA! IT GOT WORSE AND WORSE. Finally I convinced the builder to pay for a beam to run the full length of the kitchen and it looks spectacular. Why the beam? The only way to properly fix the ceiling would involve moving out for 3 days and stripping the ceiling in the kitchen, great room and dining area! What a mess that would have been.

This question is actually for Frank DeAngelo and the like, because I really don't know the answer... Why don't the home inspectors who people hire (before the one-year mark of buying a new house) catch this problem? Surely they go up in the attic... can they see there's not enough support there for the garage ceilings?

New home inspectors won’t rock the Warranty Dept. boat. They need to maintain a good relationship with them.


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Home inspection
 

Before Frank DeAngelo responds to this... He was my 1 year home inspector. It was he who also saw and turned in the cracking problems to home warranty for repair. A few days later the cracks were all repaired. Weeks or months later, they were all back. -After warranty expiration. That is the problem.

I'd like to fix them again, but why, if they'll just be back?

If the house was built to code, then there must be something wrong with the code. This should not be happening to all these new homes.

He was in the attic over the garage but you can't see much of it from above because of low and angled trusses making it inaccessible. Also builder installed plywood on the floor.

Regarding the lanai, there is no way to see up there without cutting a big hole from below or flattening the attic insulation while crawling through. He could see from down below that the ceilings were cracked.

As to insulation, which is being suggested in the POA Bulletin. Sure, it should reduce expansion and contraction. I agree with that. Frank and I talked quite a bit about that. He could not justify my spending money to insulate a non-conditioned space. I didn't, but might have to consider that.

So the home inspector did find the problems and turned them in along with a full report to me. I think he did his job in reporting problems.

Yes, he reported the cracked drywall seams but it’s the cause that is the issue.


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bingo! :agree:

The actual issue is not primarily in the underlying structure, but rather the wrong material being used. Rather than standard drywall being used in these areas, soffit board should be specified. It is resistant to moisture and wide temperature swings.

It is occurring in garage ceilings. Standard drywall is sufficient.


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Due to moisture it should be 5/8' "blue" board moisture resistant.
Butt ends should be cut, to end on a stud.
Mesh tape is prone to cracking, any experienced drywaller will use paper tape.

you are way off base and wrong.
It isn't a moisture area like in a shower.
Also paper tape doesn't hold up like a mesh tape.
It comes down to what mud mix you use and the time between coats.
And third the thickness of mud and change of temperature.
I believe Insulated ceiling will have less cracks then non insulated due to the Rapid temperature change.
Also not having a stud behind a joint is a NO NO!!!
My opinion comes from 40 years of building HOMES!

And as a builder for 45 years, I believe you are way off base and wrong.
Mesh is garbage and is notorious for cracks.
Down here they only do 2 coats on the joints before they apply knock down.
I have 3 homes built in 95, to those specs, none have cracks and the space is NOT insulated.
If you prefer to build your homes with with 1/2" white board on the ceilings, that's fine and within code.
I'll build mine with 5/8" blue board.

We have a screened in porch, 12x30 at our home in a the northeast. When it was first built thirty years ago, we used plywood for the ceiling. I would sand and stain it every couple of years, that became old. We then had it replaced with white soffit material installed instead, looks great. There are some villas in Fenney using something similar on their lanai ceilings. When we return, we will take down the rock ceiling, have furring strips installed and then use a bead board soffit for the ceiling. Quality materials, and those that know what they are doing seem to come out on top every time. Good luck everyone.

PS- We also have cracks, repaired once and came back. The drywall person came over, said it could be repaired but no guarantees it wouldn't come back again. Thanked them for their honesty and said good bye.

Obviously, it's not.

OK, since there is a great deal of debate regarding what should be done during installation, does anyone have a reccomendation of a person/company that'll repair the problem for a reasonable charge?

Did the Warranty Department suggest any solution or contractor for a fix even though they won't pay ?