Is this crack a problem?

Probably not — and we’d rather tell you that than sell you piers. This checker walks your crack past the distress indications a Texas engineer actually looks at, and gives you a printable log to track it. It can end in “nothing here needs a contractor,” and often does.

Check your crack

Six questions, about a minute. Nothing is sent anywhere — this runs entirely in your browser, and we don’t ask for your name or phone number.

1. Where is the crack?

Pick the closest. If there are several, answer for the one that worries you most.

Exterior brick, stone, or stucco Interior wall or ceiling (drywall) Slab or garage floor At the corner of a door or window

2. Which of these looks most like yours?

These are the patterns that tend to accompany foundation movement rather than ordinary shrinkage.

Stair-stepped, following the mortar joints in brick Diagonal, running up from a door or window corner A floor crack where one side sits higher, forming a lip None of these — it’s a thin, fairly straight line

3. Has one side moved relative to the other?

Run a fingernail across it. Does one side sit higher, or has the brick coursing stopped being level across the crack? This matters more than width.

Yes — there’s a step or lip, or the coursing is off No — it’s flat across, just open Not sure

4. Is anything else on this list happening?

Check all that apply. These are the kinds of indications the ASCE Texas guidelines list as possible signs of inadequate foundation performance — and any one of them on its own may mean nothing.

Doors or windows have started to stick, drag, or not latch (the guidelines call this racking of door and window frames) Gaps opening where walls meet the ceiling or the floor, or trim separating at joints that used to be tight Floor covering cracking, buckling, or separating — tile, wood, or vinyl Countertops, cabinets, sills, or trim visibly out of level A chimney leaning or pulling away from the house None of these

5. Is it changing?

Change over time is what engineers compare between surveys. A crack that has looked the same for years is a different situation from one that’s moving.

About the same for a year or more Fairly new — I only noticed it recently Noticeably growing or lengthening Not sure

6. Any of these, right now?

Rare, but they change the answer immediately.

Concrete crumbling or flaking away, with reinforcing steel visible Brick or stone that feels loose, bulging, or unstable to the touch Any part of the structure sagging or partially collapsed

Show my result Start over

Why we don’t publish a crack-width chart

You’ll find plenty of them online: under 1/16 inch is cosmetic, over 1/4 inch is structural, that sort of thing. We looked for the source of those numbers in the document Texas engineers actually work from, and here is what we found.

The ASCE Texas Section guidelines contain no diagnostic crack-width threshold. Not one. We read the full text of Version 3 (2022) looking for it. The only crack-width figure anywhere in it sits at §7.4.3.3, and it’s about repair method: injecting slab cracks of about 1/32 inch and larger with epoxy is intended to restore stiffness across the crack. That’s a decision an engineer makes after concluding repair is warranted. It is not a test for whether your crack matters — and we’re naming the number so you can go check us.

What the guidelines say instead is that “the physical characteristics of the observed cracks should be considered” (§5.2) — without reducing that to a number. The width tables you see elsewhere mostly trace back to a British classification developed for masonry damage. It’s a reasonable frame for brickwork, but it is not a Texas standard for slab-on-grade foundations on expansive clay, and presenting it as one would be inventing precision we don’t have.

So this tool asks about offset, companion signs, and change over time instead. Those are the things the guidelines actually point to.

What an engineer actually measures

Cracks are one of the things the guidelines tell an engineer to evaluate — they’re just not the thing the guidelines put a number to. The criterion that is quantified is about the shape of your foundation. An engineer takes relative floor elevations throughout the house, adjusts for floor-covering thickness and any built-in slopes, and from that calculates a deflection ratio: the maximum deviation of a third point from a straight line drawn between two points, divided by the distance between those two points.

That ratio gets compared against a limit borrowed by analogy from the residential building code’s maximum allowable live load deflection for a floor member, L/360 — with differential soil movement treated as analogous to live load, and the whole foundation treated as though it were a single structural member. The guidelines are careful here, and so are we: they say this limit “may be appropriate.” It’s a reasoned analogy, not a bright line. They add that deflection “may be more difficult to evaluate quantitatively than any other element of performance,” that a single survey may not be enough to support a conclusion, and that a floor survey should never be the only basis for the call.

Worth knowing, because it cuts the reassuring way too: the guidelines say that if a foundation profile shows deflection less than that L/360 limit, it is unlikely the foundation has deflected materially unless visible indications show otherwise.

Two cautions from the same document that are worth knowing before anyone quotes numbers at you:

• Short spans are unreliable evidence. On localized deflection, the guidelines advise caution when evaluating floor deviations over a distance of less than approximately 20 feet, because built-in unevenness can dominate the reading.
• “Noticeable” is not the same as “damaged.” The guidelines note that a tilt greater than 1 percent is usually noticeable, and that the Americans with Disabilities Act treats a 2 percent slope as too large. Those are about perception and accessibility — neither is a repair trigger.

The three levels of investigation

The guidelines describe three scopes, all performed by an engineer licensed in Texas:

If a crack is worth resolving rather than watching, a Level B investigation is usually what answers the question — because that’s the level where somebody actually measures your floor instead of looking at it.

Why an independent engineer, not a free inspection

Foundation repair companies will assess your house at no charge. That assessment is also a sales call, and there is nothing dishonest about that as long as you know it. An independent structural engineer doesn’t sell repairs, so their conclusion has no financial stake in it.

The guidelines’ ethics section (§2.2) says avoiding conflicts of interest is essential to the credibility of a foundation evaluation, and that the evaluating engineer must demonstrate impartiality. To be straight with you about what that does and doesn’t say: it’s a general engineering-ethics provision and it says nothing about repair contractors or free inspections. The conclusion we draw from it — start with someone who isn’t selling the repair — is ours, not the Texas Section’s. More on vetting in how repair works and how to hire.

How this checker decides

No black box. These are the exact rules, in order — the first one that matches is the answer you get.

Why these rules and not width bands: offset, companion indications, and rate of change are what the Texas guidelines actually point to. Width isn’t weighted at all, because the guidelines give no width criterion to weight it against. Note also that answering “fairly new” or “not sure” on question 5 doesn’t escalate anything on its own — only “noticeably growing” does.

Measuring and tracking it

Whatever your result, the single most useful thing you can do is establish whether the crack is moving. That takes five minutes now and five minutes later.

1. Mark the ends. Draw a light pencil tick at each end of the crack and write today’s date beside it. If it lengthens, you’ll see it.
2. Measure the width at the widest point and write the number down. Photograph it with something for scale beside it.
3. Re-check monthly, and always after the seasonal extremes — the end of a dry summer and after the first sustained rain. That’s when Central Texas clay does its moving.

No crack gauge? Everyday objects have standardized thicknesses you can use as a reference:

More accurate: print the scale. Print this page at 100% with scaling off, check the ruler on the scale below against a real ruler, then hold the paper against the crack and match the closest line.

Before you spend anything, fix the water

Soil moisture is what moves foundations here, and it’s the cheapest thing to change. The Texas guidelines treat non-structural measures as a legitimate first step:

“Applying non-structural remedial measures and monitoring foundation performance prior to or in lieu of structural repairs may be a prudent approach.” ASCE Texas Section guidelines, Version 3, §7.3

Two specifics from the same document you can check yourself with a tape measure:

• Grade away from the house. For adjacent exposed or vegetative ground, and where practicable, the guidelines call for a minimum slope of 5 percent — 6 inches of fall over the first 10 feet — all the way around.
• Give swales somewhere to go. At least a 2 percent longitudinal slope where practicable (6 inches per 25 feet), and 1 percent as a minimum.

Then there’s watering. Consistent, even soaker-hose watering through a dry stretch is the $30 version of foundation care — and it’s easy to get wrong in both directions. We wrote up the routine in watering your foundation through a Central Texas drought. Whether any of this applies to your lot depends on what’s under it, which you can check with the soil-risk ZIP checker or the interactive soil map.

Common questions

How wide does a crack have to be before it’s a problem?

There’s no published width cutoff in the Texas guidelines, which is why we don’t give you one. Offset, companion signs, and whether it’s changing carry the weight instead.

Are hairline cracks in a new slab normal?

Concrete shrinks as it cures, and shrinkage cracking is common. The guidelines note that the majority of cracks do not compromise structural integrity, and they attach a plain caution to their own list of distress indications: observing some of those conditions “does not necessarily imply inadequate structural performance or insufficient stiffness.” Age of the house and any previous repairs matter to how much weight any sign carries.

Is it normal for this to get worse in August and better after rain?

That seasonal swing is the signature of expansive clay, and it’s exactly why a single look at a single moment can mislead. It’s also why the log above is worth keeping — a year of dated measurements tells a story that one afternoon can’t. There’s more on the mechanism in why east-county homes crack more.

Can I just have a foundation company tell me?

You can, and many are straight with people. Just be clear about what it is: a free assessment from a company that profits if the answer is yes. An independent engineer is the version of that conversation with no stake in the outcome.

Is choosing not to repair a legitimate option?

Sometimes, yes. The guidelines explicitly contemplate an owner choosing periodic cosmetic repairs and door adjustments over comprehensive underpinning. That’s a decision to make with an engineer’s read in hand, not instead of one.

Sources, and how this page was checked

• ASCE Texas Section, Guidelines for the Evaluation and Repair of Residential Foundations, Version 3, adopted April 1, 2022 — free download from the Texas Section of ASCE. © 2022 Texas Section – American Society of Civil Engineers. Short excerpts quoted above for commentary, with attribution. Sections referenced: 2.1 (who may perform an evaluation), 2.2 (professional ethics and impartiality), 3.1 (levels of investigation), 5.2 (structural integrity and cracks), 5.3 (performance indications), 5.4 (deflection and tilt, original construction elevations), 5.5 (deflection, including localized deflection), 5.6 (tilt), 5.7 (remediation criteria and unsafe conditions), 7.3 (non-structural measures and drainage), 7.4.3.3 (epoxy injection).
• The guidelines’ own caveat, which applies to everything above: they are guidelines rather than standards, they reflect the engineering opinions of the committee, they do not themselves comprise the standard of care, and they are written for engineers — not for homeowners. This page is our plain-language reading of them for a homeowner audience. Any interpretation here is ours, not the Texas Section’s.
• ISO/IEC 7810 — identification card physical characteristics, ID-1 nominal thickness 0.76 mm.
• United States Mint — published coin specifications for dime, penny, quarter, and nickel thickness.

ASCE and dimensional citations on this page last verified July 26, 2026, and re-checked on a schedule. If a newer version of the guidelines is adopted or a source moves, this page changes.