Please can you help me? I’m getting desperate!!!

I have had a house built that achieved practical completion in March 2014. A couple of months after that, cracks started to appear in the render from the corner of the windows on two walls.

My architect & builder insisted on leaving it 12 months to see what else might occur. Well, now that 12 months is up, they have been and cut around the cracks to investigate and the cracks aren’t just in the render but in the blocks themselves.

Initially I thought it may be due to the lack of an expansion joint – the house is 10 metres wide but doesn’t have expansion joints, but now I see cracks appearing pretty much over 3 walls of my house including an annex wall that is only a couple of metres long… I don’t think expansion joints would solve this problem.

I am beginning to think that cracks may be due to a faulty batch of blocks? The specification was for cavity walls with two skins of 100mm concrete blockwork 7N/mm2, 250mm cavity. Cavity between to be 250 wide, fully filled with Rockwool Cavity insulation (50/100/100).

It’s over a week now since the investigations and my architect was going to organise a structural engineer to call out – but I’ve heard nothing yet …. it has all gone very quiet.

Two main questions, then:

(i) If the blocks were faulty what on earth can be done??? Is it a knock down and re-build? The idea was to have a new home to last me the rest of my life – my late husband did all maintenance but I wanted a stress-free old age. I seem to have anything but.

(ii) Hopefully, as the build hasn’t been finally signed off by the architect managing my contract, the main contractor will carry the financial responsibility?

I had organised a 10 year warranty but as Building Control hasn’t signed off the build, I hadn’t been able to complete that, and now the problem is apparent it wouldn’t be issued until the problem is resolved.

I’m a woman in her mid 60s living alone and am feeling pretty vulnerable now. I hoped this would be a straightforward process – no changes made during the build and a straightforward box with 3 bedrooms, no complicated roof structure. I have been worrying about all of this for around a year – fearing a re-render job but now it feels so much worse! This stress is overwhelming me.

Any advice about what I can now do and what I might realistically expect to happen would be so appreciated.

Many thanks