Help please: Porter Davis 5 year old FC (Fibre Cement) Sheet

The exterior of the back of the house is cracking. We only noticed it recently while walking home. It is a part of the house which we normally cannot see unless we are a distance away. It is a Porter Davis Brookvale home. We contacted them via email and sent in the photos and according to them, this is a painting issue and not covered under warranty. Just wanting some advice from anyone here who can help me identify what those sheets are and if they should have been primed, painted or rendered. According to house plans it says FC Sheets.

The first 2 photos were taken during construction stage. FC Sheets were attached to the house in August 2009 and painted October 2009.



The next few photos were taken October 2014. 5 years later and it looks like this.



You can see that there are long cracks in the middle bottom of each board.

The wooden parts are also flaking very badly with the nail heads rusting through and in some parts coming loose off the wall.



I am hoping that someone can help me out here because this is what Porter Davis are saying to me:

"I have had the new home care supervisors assess the photos, this area does require repainting. As part of home owner maintenance external painted or stained areas must be maintained by the home owner when required. Generally the weather contributes to this happening, both the sun and rain. Paint acts as a sealer/protectant for external surfaces, if this is not maintained as required, it will cause surfaces such as timber to split/flake/bow. Exterior acrylic paint has a minimum durability of 36 months and exterior enamel is 24 months."

While I do not doubt that their statements are right. I think the FC sheets cracking is not a paint issue....unless the first paint job was not done properly??

Please help. Thank you!!

So who did the painting in the first place ? PD or you ? The timber looks like it has had maybe an undercoat and thats it. The sheet cracking looks more like structural movement.

Stewie

I can't comment on the FC sheeting but I thought exterior enamel paint on wood had a life of approximately ten years? If they had been varnished I would have understood it but paint?

Hi Overwhelmed2
At a guess they appear to be tension cracks caused by sagging (unfortunately timber sags and deflect while FC fixed vertically cracks)?
Do you have photos of the inside of the wall framing/roof.
Do you have the original engineering drawings for the house
Is there excessive deflection of the support beam supporting the wall
Sorry more information is required...

Is there any indication on the inside wall (opposite the crack) of deflection/movement?

PD did the painting.

Attaching more photos of the construction stage. I assume this is what you mean by photos of the wall framing/roof? Are engineering drawings the contraction drawings? not sure if these are the right ones.

R2 R3 R4 is the line where there are cracks happening. Next pic is the ground level and it correlates to 1B1 and 1L4 line. LOL I hope I'm making sense



















Thanks for the help and I hope these photos help.

Interior walls are fine. No evidence of sagging or cracking.