Philip Lamachio

Most homeowners, many home inspectors and quite a few plaster repair contractors do not realize the signifigance of certain cracks in their plaster ceiling.

Straight line ceiling cracks in plaster ceilings could signify a potential danger of sudden collapse. Fortunatly, these ceilings can be made safe, and the great thing is that homeowner's insurance may pay for the repair.

To find out more go to estateplaster.com and see if you have a ceiling that could suddenly collapse without warning.

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Contact Brian Haire or Philip LaMachio at our local Greensboro, NC. office serving the Peidmont Triad area and the Counties of Guilford, Alamace, Forsyth, Rockingham, Orange, Chatham, Stokes, Surry, Caswell, Iredell, Montgomery and Randolph counties.

For your local Advantage Inspection office, call Philip @ 336-327-5523

Advantage Inspection Clear Veiw

For opportunities throughout the Southeast, call: 864-298-0405. ( Tell them Philip sent you ! Thanks ! )

Advantage Inspection International

Member of Nachi

I am a home inspector living in Greensboro NC, working in the Peidmont Triad area since '92, doing remodeling and plaster restoration.

When I first came back home (here) from Chicago and began my own restoration buisness, I kept seeing a peculiar crack in the ceilings of homes of certain vintage.

Usually the crack would occur in the living room, but would occasionally be found in others.

The crack would be straight down the middle of the ceiling, going the length of the room. The homes would have plaster as an interior finish and were usually built between 1946 - 1965 +/-.

Many times it was evident that someone in the past had tried to repair these cracks, but to no avail. It always came back.

One day I had a call from a customer who had a major problem. When I got there, the ceiling was split down the middle and thousands of pounds of plaster and plaster lathe were hanging precariously, dipping about 8-12" from the ceiling, a gapeing black crack with insulation pouring from it the length of the room.

Fortunately the man had moved his mother out of the bedroom.

What we found was the following: The plaster lathe, a gypsum board type product which formed the base for the hand troweled plaster scratch and top coats, had originally been attached by a clip system, which connected at the edges of the base and were nailed to the joists.

The metal clips had given way under the enormous weight of the plaster and lathe and the gypsum base came apart at the seams which was directly across the middle of the room.

We removed the whole ceiling and replaced it with drywall.

Later we found out that the house next to that one had been built at the same time (late 40's ?), but within weeks of completion, the ceilings fell out completely. Hopefully no one was injured.

Since then we have found numerous 'transitional' systems*, some using metal wires or hangers, others using grids of wood and nails on which the gypsum lathe and plaster were hung. All of these were systems that were in the process of failure, and though we re-secured most of them, a few made me fear for my life during the process.

So the next time you see a long, straight crack in a plaster ceiling going staight down the middle of the largest room in a vintage house, don't think it is something cosmetic. It is a progressive failure of a ceiling system, signifying a loss of structural integrity and a potential safety hazard until it is properly addressed.

Philip LaMachio NC Home Inspector # 2631

Advantage Inspection Clear View Preferred Vendor Provider of Lowe's Home Improvement Inc.

Estate Plaster and Restoration, Inc.

336-327-5523

* I refer to them as transitional systems because the previous method of using narrow red oak strips set 1/4" apart or minor variations of it, with plaster adherered to and pushed through to form 'keys' had been used for hundreds of years, up until the mid. teens of the early 20th Cent. The first real change was the use of wire and sometimes smaller sections of gypsum lathe (various sizes) starting in the 20's and through the early 40's, though in various places, the earlier wood lathe system may have found continued use. The conclusion of this transition of experimentation with gypsum lathes has left us with no actual plaster on the lathe at all, only where the joints meet, which is today our drywall system. Simply a Plaster system minus the plaster.