Pesachim 7a: Rav Yehuda said: Before the search for chometz, one must make a bracha.
Rosh: “Some say that one should not speak until he finishes the bedikah, and some even say that if one did speak about matters unrelated to the bedikah, he must repeat the bracha. But I disagree. True, one should not speak between the bracha and starting the bedikah, but once he has started, speaking is not a hefsek, just as one may speak while sitting in a succah or during a meal and does not have to repeat the bracha on the succah or the hamotzi. Still, it is best not to talk about unrelated matters until finishing the entire bedikah, so that he should concentrate on checking every room and place where chometz is brought.” The Shulchan Aruch 432:1 rules in accordance with the Rosh.
פסחים ז ע”א: אמר רב יהודה: הבודק צריך שיברך.
הרא”ש: ויש אומרים שאין לבודק לדבר עד שיגמור הבדיקה ויש מוסיפין עוד יותר ואומרים שאם סח בדברים דעלמא שלא מעין הבדיקה שצריך לחזור ולברך וכל זה אין נראה לי אלא שיש ליזהר שלא יסיח בין ברכה לתחלת הבדיקה ואחר שהתחיל לא הויא שיחה הפסק מידי דהוה אישיבת סוכה וכאדם המדבר בתוך סעודתו דלא הויא שיחה הפסק להצריך לחזור ולברך על הסוכה וברכת המוציא… ומיהו לכתחילה טוב ליזהר שלא יעסוק בשיחה בטילה עד שיגמור כל הבדיקה כולה כדי שישים אל לבו לבדוק בחדרים ובעליות ובכל מקום שמכניסין בו חמץ.
One of the things that resulted from Rav Chaim Kanievsky’s long bedikas chometz was a complete booklet on the topic of bedikas chometz. Rav Chaim zt”l was accustomed not to speak during the bedikah, beginning from the bracha until the end – except for matters related to the search. Even if people were asking for a bracha, he would not answer with words, but only nodded his head.
One of the relatives who assisted Rav Chaim zt”l with bedikas chometz each year thought of an idea. Several days before Pesach he prepared questions about the laws of bedikas chometz. During the time of the bedikah, he came with pages of questions, and Rav Chaim zt”l answered all the questions, since they were related to the search. However, he would not answer shaalos on other topics. In this way, by the end of bedikas chometz, which took many long hours, he accumulated hundreds of answers from Rav Chaim which encompassed all the laws of the bedikah, enough to fill a complete sefer.
Source: Derech Emunah Bacharti, p. 3
[The Rosh does not say who this authority was who held that if one speaks, the bracha must be repeated. And the Rosh’s argument against this seems very convincing. After all, when doing the same mitzvah, such as succah, for an extended period of time, one need not be silent for the whole time. Why should bedikah be any different?
The answer may lie in the Rema in the following s’if, 432:2. The Rema quotes the Mahari Brin (Rabbi Yisroel Bruna) who held that before the bedikah, pieces of chometz should be put out so that the searcher will find them and his bracha will not be in vain. The Rema then disagrees and quotes with approval the Kol Bo, who says that the bracha is not in vain because when a person says על ביעור חמץ – “on the destruction of chometz,” he has in mind to destroy it if he finds it.
It seems that this dispute is about whether the bracha goes on the searching itself (i.e. Chazal enacted that we must search for chometz, so whether we find any or not, we are fulfilling the mitzvah), or on the actual finding and destruction of chometz.
If so, according to the opinion of the Mahari Brin that the mitzvah is to actually find chometz, if one began the bedikah but did not yet find anything, he has not started the mitzvah and thus would not be allowed to interrupt with speaking. One who spoke before finding the first piece of bread would have to repeat the bracha. This would be the meaning of the opinion quoted by the Rosh. (Although the Rosh lived before the Mahari Brin, we can assume that the authority he quoted held the same position as the Mahari Brin.)
The Taz, commenting on the Rema about putting out ten pieces, offers a different reason why the bracha is not in vain even if ten pieces were not placed and no chometz was found: because the bracha refers to the burning of the chometz in the morning. The difficulty with the Taz is: what if no ten pieces were placed, no chometz was found during the search, and the person’s bracha therefore goes only on his burning in the morning? Then it should come out that he would not be allowed to speak from the bedikah until the burning. But we don’t find such a halacha.
We also see from the Rosh that the reason it is allowed to talk about matters related to the bedikah is not because it actually helps one search, similar to the halacha (Orach Chaim 167:6) that one may say, “Pass the salt” between hamotzi and eating. Rather, the reason is that one must stay focused on the bedikah and make sure to do a good job, and talking about related matters will not distract him. (But, for example, a person would not be allowed to listen to a shiur on some unrelated topic while doing the bedikah, even if he himself does not speak at all.) This explains why Rav Chaim was willing to speak about the halachos of bedikah even though this speaking did not actually help him do his own bedikah.]
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