12 Signs Your Foundation Is Actually Moving

The signs that actually indicate movement

• Doors that used to latch and now stick, drag on the frame, or swing open on their own. This is the single most reliable everyday symptom, because a door is a precision-fitted object in a wall.
• Diagonal cracks running out of the top corner of a door or window frame. Corners concentrate stress, so that is where movement shows first.
• Cracks wider than a credit card, or cracks where one face has displaced relative to the other.
• Gaps opening between the wall and baseboard, or between crown moulding and the ceiling.
• Windows that have become hard to open, or that no longer sit square in the frame.
• Floors that feel sloped. Roll a ball in a few rooms - if it consistently runs the same direction, take note.
• Stair-step cracking through exterior brick or mortar, particularly near corners.
• A visible gap between the slab edge and the soil, or soil pulling away from the house in dry months.
• Cracked or separating exterior trim, or a chimney leaning away from the house.
• Cabinets or countertops separating slightly from the wall.
• Cracked tile in a line across a floor, rather than a single cracked tile.
• Anything that has visibly changed in the last year. Change matters far more than presence.

What to do before you call anyone

• Photograph everything with a date and something for scale - a coin or a ruler beside the crack.
• Mark both ends of significant cracks with a pencil line and write the date next to it.
• Check the same things again in a month, and again after a serious rain or a long dry spell.
• Walk the outside during heavy rain and watch where water actually goes. This tells you more than any interior inspection.
• Look at your downspouts. If they discharge right beside the slab, you have found something worth fixing regardless.
• Note when symptoms appeared and whether they track the seasons. Seasonal opening and closing is very common here.

Signs that are usually nothing

• Hairline cracks in a garage floor or new slab during the first year or two - that is concrete curing.
• Small drywall cracks at the corners of doorways that appear and close with the seasons.
• Nail pops in drywall.
• A single cracked floor tile with no other symptoms.
• Cracks you have watched for a decade that have not changed. Stable is the key word in this whole subject.

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