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Doubt it, the soil here is like concrete. It's why very few houses have basements here, they are a bitch to dig and not cost effective.
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Would compacting the soil before setting the foundation help any?
Doubt it, the soil here is like concrete. It's why very few houses have basements here, they are a bitch to dig and not cost effective.
There are still plenty of soils related settling problems in homes here in Vegas. I just wrapped up a construction defect case where the soils were so bad that the $2M house literally started to crack in half.
Best case is that these are pretty standard joint cracks caused by normal settling.
My fear for you, though, is that it could potentially be something worse. If there were no cracks when you bought the house one year ago, and they've just now appeared in the year since you bought it, I'd be concerned that the seller patched the cracks before selling and didn't disclose the cracks. If this is the case, you could have some more serious problems. It could be coincidence that the cracks just now showed up, but in my experience, 10-14 year old houses don't just start to show cracks suddenly in the 12th (or whatever year it is) year.
I'd patch the cracks and watch closely to see if they reopen soon. If they reopen, I'd have an engineer come out and take a look to make sure you don't have any foundation or soil related problems.