I've lived in a detached 1860-ish house just over 3 years. Every now and then I notice a crack in external wall or on a ceiling that I can't tell if it was there before or not - being an old house there are a lot of old cracks and often I think it's the way the light catches it or whatever.
None are wide - hairline cracks in ceilings, not much wider outside - but there's at least one quite long one down an external brick wall (but no sign on the inside). Half the house is rendered and cracks there seem to be horizontal/vertical which makes me think that might just be like cracks in a skimmed wall?
I was looking into tell-tales like: https://www.surveyorsequipment.co.uk/inspection-detection/crack-monitoring/standard-tell-tale.html
But they seem to have a resolution of about 1mm, maybe half a mil. If the existing cracks got 1mm wider it would be pretty obvious so does that suggest it's not worth putting the monitors on? Any expansion seems more like a tenth of a mm. Or is it worth putting a few on anyway for peace of mind, they don't cost much?
The other idea I had was since the house is rendered/painted white (about 10 years ago), cracks show up reasonably well. Would taking a really detailed photographic record be worthwhile so I can tell if a newly-seen crack is actually new?
Thanks for any advice.
None are wide - hairline cracks in ceilings, not much wider outside - but there's at least one quite long one down an external brick wall (but no sign on the inside). Half the house is rendered and cracks there seem to be horizontal/vertical which makes me think that might just be like cracks in a skimmed wall?
I was looking into tell-tales like: https://www.surveyorsequipment.co.uk/inspection-detection/crack-monitoring/standard-tell-tale.html
But they seem to have a resolution of about 1mm, maybe half a mil. If the existing cracks got 1mm wider it would be pretty obvious so does that suggest it's not worth putting the monitors on? Any expansion seems more like a tenth of a mm. Or is it worth putting a few on anyway for peace of mind, they don't cost much?
The other idea I had was since the house is rendered/painted white (about 10 years ago), cracks show up reasonably well. Would taking a really detailed photographic record be worthwhile so I can tell if a newly-seen crack is actually new?
Thanks for any advice.