Should I be worried? Cracks on exterior brick.

[Llewis2013]

Moved into our 14 year old house 2 years ago. Our inspection reflected a few brick expansion joints that needed to be repaired, which were. We bought sight unseen. Since moving in, we have issues with a few doors not latching, a few ceiling cracks (which existed at time of inspection), and our windows have a hard time closing. We’ve also noticed a little separation of cabinets on walls. I did a walk around outside and found these couple of cracks underneath windows. There’s no cracking along vertical walls inside those particular windows.

For reference, we live in SW Oklahoma (we got up to 120 degrees this summer and all the way down to 1 degree a few weeks ago).

Should we be worried?

 

[jeds]

SW Oklahoma is a bit outside of my patch, but it does look like you might have some minor stress cracking. I emphasize 'minor'. At the moment I don't think it is something to get too worried about, but it would be wise to monitor the cracks to see if they are active. A good way to do that is to circle the ends of the hairline cracks with pencil - and take a photo. If, in a few months, the cracks move beyond the pencil line you know they are still active.

Or you could ask the cat to keep an eye on it and report back if something moves?

 

[Llewis2013]

Thank you so much for your feedback!

Putting the cat to work is a good suggestion, I’ll let him know!