Hi all,

Hoping to get any feedback regarding cracks like the below. Our house is less than 3 months old and this is what we are seeing happening. This is the worst of them, other cracks are over 5mm in diameter and there is not a single stretch of cornice without a crack at least 1mm.

We are having a building inspector come through for us for a report for maintenance but I am a bit concerned given our builders plasterer flat out refused to do any repairs until his boss had seen the issues. The other concern is the builder telling us that this relates to the hot and cold we are getting...funnily enough friends of ours who recently built in canberra have had no such issues...

Should we be really concerned?

Thanks in advance.

PS: We had inspections throughout the build and apparently was no (major) issues.

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Wow, that's terrible! Sorry I have no advice but will be interested to see what the outcome is! Surely that needs repair/replacing?!! Wishing you lots of luck and a good building inspector!

Could this be a fault with the cornice itself ? Will be interesting to see what the inspector has to say is it the same guy who did inspections throughout your build ?
We are renting a house that is new ( about 6 months old ) and the only cracks we have is where the cornice is moving away from the ceiling
Have never seen a cornice crack like that before

Indeed, it is terrible. I will be sure to post the outcome up.



Not a cornice fault according to 3 plasterers. As they said, once it is glued it cant just fracture like that without force. We are using a different inspector for this one.

What scares me is we have 3 corners which are now seperated by over 18mm, 2 cornice splinters like the original photo and a myriad of seperations and lifts exceeding 8mm. There is not one piece of cornice with out cracks. We are also getting arc and skirting cracks appearing now as well the overhead kitchen cabinets seem to be moving also. To top it off we are now finding plaster cracks no where near joins and the fracture you see in the photo has a major crack in the plaster also. We are rather concerned and pretty annoyed with the builders response to it so far of "just wait for maintenance". I am just holding off on a pretty full on blog post and review until our inspector gives us a whats up.

What kind of slab / soil do you have ?
Hopefully its nothing major causing the cracking...

We often get movement cracks at cornice joins but that cornice has been ripped in two. You have some more serious issues with movement I think.

That's structural problem, It could be roof trusses design issue or footings.

What was the soil class? Do any neighbours have any similar issues? I would email builder pics as they probably just think your being over the top, which your not, they are serious cracks and faults showing up.

We are on HD slab, as are our neighbours. Checked with 3 neighbours, none have any of these issues.

I emailed the builder the pic I posted here and our SS is saying it is just settling...Seeing friends places and even seeing our next door neighbours with a different builder, they have some hairline cracks which have started to appear after 6 months not after 3 weeks when we first started noticing.They also cannot fit a car key inside their cracks...

So far our builder has been great for rectifying issues, however, this one they keep pushing onto maintanence which makes me think they want to keep pushing it out :/

Have you had a look at brickwork, is it cracking? What about doors, are they jamming? It certainly looks like your home is moving badly. Check outside home for plumbing & drainage leaks and in wet areas internally.

This is terrible, can you please let us know which builder and building inspector you've used so that we can all avoid them at all costs?

Hope it works out for you mate

Could be caused by moisture as don't there see don't see any stress fractures on the plaster around the crack.. As said previously check for other evidence of movement.

I wont release any names of either as a little searching will locate the builder anyway. As for the inspector, nothing he did through the build was wrong, there are 2 issues we face, one is heaving caused by a pooling issue and the other is too much of the additive used to keep cornice cement from going off (tests done by gyprock confirmed this). The builder has their engineers coming in on Tuesday and we have our engineer following the day after to do full tests. Our engineer has already done probe tests to confirm the issues on why we have heave and now it is just making sure our builders guys will do what our guy is saying.

I have to say, our builder has been pretty good since we raised the issue a 2nd time. We also have one of the GM's coming on site Tuesday.

I have no doubt everything that needs to be rectified will be, especially given the small breaches of contract and also ignoring our inspectors recommendations.



The plaster isn't cracking in the stress points because it is shearing away, the rest is as per above.