Extension that moves

[Cir]

Hello,

I have an old timber house from the 1920s built on a slope, which the previous owner extended in 2010 on the sloped side.

The extension consists of a slab on the ground, concrete blocks in the walls on the lower floor (unfinished today, I use it as a workshop) and a kitchen area on the upper floor in the extension.

I noticed that the floor had lifted at a joint between the old and new parts, and when I removed the click flooring, I realized that the entire extension had twisted slightly and the reason the floor had lifted is that the chipboards were compressed.

No cracks in the walls, either upstairs or downstairs.

It's not a huge gap, but it has separated maybe 10mm on one side and compressed on the other side of the joint.

Is this normal? The extension would likely settle a bit over 14 years, and the old part has had 100 years to find its place, I think.



Here is the largest gap. You can see the joint has separated.



Here is the joint where the gap has occurred. The far side is where it has separated the most.

Ignore the filler, there are no cracks in the wall 😁

 

[b8q]

I would say that it is completely normal for building parts with completely different ages and additionally completely different materials and construction techniques to move relative to each other. Looking at the far end of the image by the baseboard under the window, the left half also seems to have sunk somewhat?

The solution is to have an expansion joint in the junction between the building parts that can absorb the movements so that the floor does not need to deform.

 

[Cir]

I would say that it is completely normal for building parts with completely different ages and also completely different materials and construction techniques to move in relation to each other. If you look farthest away in the picture at the floor molding under the window, the left half also seems to have sunk slightly?

The solution is to have an expansion joint at the seam between the building parts that can absorb the movements, so the floor doesn't need to deform.

Nice to get a second opinion that I'm not completely off track.

I'm thinking of cutting open a bit where it's squeezed together and giving the floor an extra cm to expand, so it can settle again.

The particle board isn't screwed down unless the builder fastened it in the groove, so I should probably go over it and super-screw it to hold it in place.