Warning: My adobe walls shifted 2 inches in 3 months after that monsoon

I put in new stucco last spring and thought the walls were solid, but after July's heavy rains I noticed cracks spreading across the living room. Measured the gap at the ceiling corner and it grew from nothing to a full 2 inches by October. Has anyone else seen that kind of movement from clay soil swelling up after a wet season?

2 comments

2 Comments

miles_robinson205d ago

My gravel base under the stucco saved me from that last year.

fiona_hunt715d ago

Ugh, that is rough. I had the exact same thing happen with an old cabin I owned near Sedona. The corner of the bedroom ceiling dropped a solid inch and a half after one freak rain season, and I thought the whole place was coming down. The clay soil there just turns into this spongy mess when it gets wet, and then when it dries out it leaves a gap. Yours moving two inches is worse than mine though, that is a lot of shifting.