Common Causes For Structural Home Framing Failure

If you're starting to have problems with your home like large cracks in the walls, either on the inside or the outside, there's a good chance that you have some sort of structural home framing failure. This could be caused by a few different things, so let's take a look at all three this of them.

The three biggest causes for structural home framing failure will be insect damage, water damage and poor construction. Let's start with the types of damage that your home is most likely to be suffering from first. When ever structural home framing failure starts to happen, the first thing that comes to my mind are those pesky little termites.

I have seen termites destroy structural framing components and even wood that other people told me, termites couldn't eat. I haven't found one type of wood yet, that termites don't enjoy eating. The second type of structural wood damage is caused from moisture which rots the wood. This will be more common in areas like bathrooms and kitchens, where water has been leaking for a long period of time with out repairs.

Structural house framing damage from insects and wood rot is probably the most common out of any thing else, I could possibly think of. I have repaired and replaced more structural home framing failure problems from water and termite damage, then poor construction. If your house is suffering from large cracks in the walls, floors or ceilings, you can almost bet that it's from termites or moisture.

Now what about poor construction? Every once in a while I run into a structural framing problem, where someone used an undersized bean or post. This isn't the only type of poor construction problem though, sometimes additional weight from a patio or room addition is added to the home, with out preparing the rest of the framing for the additional load.

Whenever you have problems with your structural wood framing components, you should get them fixed as soon as possible. If one of these structural components was to fail, you could find a large section of the house collapsing. I don't need to tell you, what would actually happen to one of your family members, if they were in the wrong spot at the wrong time.