Thread: Brick cracks on a new house

I am about to close on a new house that was completed in July. On outside walls, I notice there are substantial number of bricks that have small cracks. In a couple places, the line cracks run through a few bricks. This is my first house and I do not know if I should be concerned over this and where I can turn for help. I have attached two photos. One shows the cracks on an individual brick and the other shows the connected cracks through a few bricks. Any advice is deeply appreciated.

It looks a bit like bricks that were too wet or perhaps I should sat too moist when fired, leading ti shrinkage and subsequent cracking.

A quick call to your local BSA should provide you with an answer.

Good luck.

Picture one ...Not a concern I have a lot of bricks like this they're in Oz called Ultra Commons and are very brittle PITA to cut etc but these are not really facebricks more for rendering.


Picture two ... concerns me that the crack has developed through 3 bricks I would pay for a building inspection and point these cracks out to them.Espeically if you have more than this series of bricks cracking.

Thanks for reply. What does BSA stand for? Apologize for my ignorance.

Thanks Jago for the reply. I am quite ignorant about construction and building. So I do not quite understand what your comments on picture 1 although I roughly know the meaning of each word. Can you rephrase it so that I can understand it better. Thanks again for your help!

Originally Posted by jago

Picture one ...Not a concern I have a lot of bricks like this they're in Oz called Ultra Commons and are very brittle PITA to cut etc but these are not really facebricks more for rendering.

The quality of the the bricks are for a secondary coating system either cement render or plastic render.Brickies are not keen to use them as they explode when tapped with a trowel when they try to cut them, which makes for a lot of extra work and wastage.

They are very brittle because of the way the were fired (made) which means that they are prone to cracking which is fine if covered, see above....PITA = Pain in the A...

Ultra commons is just a name to specifiy there use and type and are cheap by comparision to facebricks in Australia, sorry cannot answer for the US.