Aluminium Cladding Services VIC 2026 - Get Quotes

Where Aluminium Earns Its Place on a Victorian Wall

Aluminium arrived in Victorian housing through architects rather than through builders, and it still shows. Walk the streets of Northcote, Brunswick, Fitzroy North or Yarraville and the rear extensions from the last fifteen years are full of dark charcoal plank and standing seam sheet, usually above a brick ground floor and usually on the sunless southern face where a lighter material would look washed out. The appeal is not durability, though it has plenty of that. What sells it is the way the material holds a flat plane and a crisp shadow line in a way board products cannot, and the joints stay where the drawing put them. Architects specify it for that reason rather than for longevity, and owners inherit the longevity as a bonus.

Weight is the second reason and it matters more on renovations than new builds. An aluminium plank system weighs a fraction of what masonry or even fibre cement puts on a frame, which makes it a practical answer for a first floor addition over an existing single storey house where the footings were never designed for another storey of brick. Engineers reach for lightweight cladding constantly on those jobs in the inner suburbs, where the alternative is underpinning. The structural repairs page covers the assessment side of that question. What the material saves in weight it spends in framing, because a flat aluminium face needs a straighter and better set out support structure than a board wall does.

Aluminium is also the answer to a very Victorian maintenance problem. Painted timber on a south facing wall in Melbourne carries mould, stays damp for weeks at a time and needs its paint system maintained to a schedule that most owners quietly let slip. A factory coated aluminium wall on the same elevation asks for a wash and nothing else, and the finish is warranted for decades rather than years. Nothing rots at the bottom course and termites have no interest in any of it. Against that sits the fact that a dent is forever and a colour discontinued is genuinely discontinued.

Where aluminium is a poor choice is easier to state. On a heritage or character overlay elevation, where the planning controls call for timber or a period profile, it is usually out of the question regardless of what the drawings want. A high bushfire attack level site calls for careful thought, because the metal loses integrity under radiant heat well before steel would and the range of systems approved at the upper BAL categories is narrower than brochures suggest. And on a cricket pitch of a back yard with three children, a soft flat metal wall at ball height is a decision the owner will revisit.

The comparison owners usually want is against fibre cement and steel. Fibre cement costs roughly half as much installed, takes a knock without permanent damage and needs painting; aluminium costs more, never needs painting and shows every impact. Steel sits between the two, heavier and stiffer than aluminium so it dents less readily, and cheaper, though the profile range is narrower. The fibre cement cladding page sets out the alternative properly, and the exterior wall cladding page compares the field. No one of the three is a mistake, and they often suit different walls on the same house.

Solid Sheet, Composite Panel and the Victorian Story

This is the section that matters most in this state and it is short. Solid aluminium is exactly that, a sheet or extrusion of metal with no core, and it does not burn. Aluminium composite panel is a laminate, two thin aluminium skins about half a millimetre each bonded either side of a core several millimetres thick, and everything about its fire performance is decided by what that core contains. A polyethylene core is a plastic, and a plastic several millimetres thick sandwiched behind metal burns readily once it is lit. A mineral filled or fire retardant core behaves very differently under test.

The two products look identical once installed and that is precisely the problem. From the footpath, from scaffolding and often from a datasheet with the core specification omitted, a polyethylene cored panel and a mineral cored one present the same face in the same colour with the same joint detail. The only reliable way to tell them apart is documentation from the manufacturer, or a core sample taken by somebody qualified to interpret it. Owners cannot do this by inspection and neither can most builders. The sample has to go to somebody equipped to identify the core, which is a laboratory rather than a site visit.

Victoria has more experience of what follows than anywhere else in the country. The Lacrosse building in Docklands burned up eight storeys of facade in 2014 after a cigarette on a balcony, and the Neo200 building on Spencer Street repeated the pattern in 2019. Out of those two events came the Victorian Cladding Taskforce, a state wide inventory of buildings wearing combustible material, and Cladding Safety Victoria, set up to examine the apartment blocks caught by it and pay for putting them right. The programme is still running and it has removed panel from hundreds of buildings.

What that means for a house is simple and worth stating plainly. The programme targets multi storey residential apartment buildings, and a detached home is outside its scope entirely. Nothing about the audit obliges a homeowner to do anything, and a single storey extension clad in solid aluminium plank has no relationship to any of it. Anybody following the story in the media can set it aside where their own house is concerned. Reporting on it seldom draws the line between a residential tower and a rear extension clearly enough.

What it does mean is that the supply chain has changed for the better, and owners should use that. Panels sold in Victoria now come with documentation because surveyors and insurers ask for it, and any reputable supplier produces a datasheet naming the exact product and its core along with the test report or certification behind it. That paperwork costs nothing and arrives by email. A supplier who will not send it, or who sends a colour chart and a brochure claim instead, has answered a different question about themselves. There is more on the same documentation question for cored systems generally on the insulated wall panels page, and the facade cladding page deals with the commercial and apartment end where the certification requirements go considerably further.

Apartment owners are in a different position and should not act alone. Where a building carries panel of unresolved status, patch repairs and individual balcony work can complicate both the assessment and any later funding, so the order of events runs through the committee and the appointed surveyor rather than through somebody pricing a wall. Establishing where the building sits in the process is the first step and it is a conversation for the committee. An individual owner cannot usefully answer it and should not be asked to fund a fix that the programme may cover.

Systems and Profiles

Interlocking plank is the most common aluminium system on Victorian houses and it is the closest thing to a conventional weatherboard in metal. Extruded lengths clip into one another with a concealed fixing, so no screw heads show on the face, and the profiles run from a sharp square edge through to shadowline and imitation weatherboard shapes. Installed runs are typically 150 to 300 millimetres wide and the material arrives cut to length. Reckon on $165 to $335 a square metre fitted, with the profile and the supplier setting where in that range a job lands. Wider boards cover ground faster and cost less per square metre than narrow shadowline profiles.

Cassette systems take a different approach and cost accordingly. Each panel is a folded tray that hooks onto a support rail, which lets a designer set a deliberate shadow gap between panels and run an open jointed facade where the waterproof line sits behind the aluminium rather than at it. That is a rainscreen, and it works well provided the membrane behind it is the right product and detailed as the waterproofing layer. Fitted, they come in at $275 to $560 a square metre, and the support framing takes a bigger share of that than owners expect. Open jointed walls are also less forgiving of a sloppy set out, since every gap is visible from the street.

Standing seam sheet has moved from roofs onto walls across inner Melbourne over the last decade and the look is distinctive. Long vertical trays are joined by a raised seam that the installer folds over on site, giving an unbroken run from base to parapet with no horizontal joint anywhere. On a tall narrow elevation it reads beautifully. It is also the system most prone to oil canning, because the pans between seams are wide and flat, and it demands the straightest substrate of any option here. Budget $240 to $480 a square metre for supply and fitting.

Composite panel, where it is used at all on housing, is used for flat feature areas rather than whole elevations. A rendered look in metal, an entry portal, a garage door surround or a band above a window head are typical applications, and the panels are folded at the edges and fixed to a subframe. Provided the core is documented and the surveyor is satisfied, there is nothing wrong with it in those locations. Set out and substrate preparation for flat panel work are dealt with on the wall panel installation page.

Perforated and expanded mesh screens are the last category and they are not cladding in the weatherproofing sense at all. Aluminium screens are used across windows, over balconies and as privacy layers in front of a wall, particularly on townhouse developments through Richmond, Prahran and Port Melbourne where overlooking is a planning issue. They do no waterproofing and they are often the element that fails first, because the fixings are exposed. The architectural cladding page covers screens and feature elements and the detailing that keeps them sound. Screens also collect leaves and dust in the gap behind them, which is worth knowing before one goes up over a window.

Whatever the system, the support structure behind it does most of the work and most of the arguing. Aluminium needs top hats, rails or battens set out to the panel module, and on a renovation that means checking and correcting an existing wall that was never straight to begin with. A Victorian weatherboard house is rarely plumb after a century of clay soil movement, and fitting a flat metal face to it without correcting the substrate produces a wall that reads as a series of bulges. That correction is a real line in the quote and it should be named rather than assumed.

Finishes and Warranties

Powder coating is the usual finish and the quality range within it is wide. An architectural grade polyester powder from an established supplier such as Dulux or Interpon, applied by a licensed applicator to a properly prepared surface, carries a written warranty that typically runs fifteen to twenty five years against chalking and fading. A cheap powder applied in an unlicensed shop looks identical on delivery and may be visibly faded within six years. The price difference between the two is smaller than the eventual repair. Ask which powder is being used and who is applying it, because both answers should be specific names.

The warranty is a document rather than a claim and it is worth asking to see. Coating warranties are usually issued by the coating manufacturer to the applicator and passed through, they are conditional on the washdown regime being followed, and they are commonly shortened within a defined distance of surf or a marine environment. That last condition catches owners along the Surf Coast and the Peninsula, where the same product might carry twenty five years inland and twelve close to the water. Reading the conditions takes five minutes and prevents a surprise in year fourteen.

Anodising is the alternative and it behaves differently in a useful way. The finish is an electrochemical conversion of the metal surface rather than a coating laid on top, so it cannot peel or flake, and it wears rather than failing at an edge. Colour range is limited to metallics, bronzes and clear, which suits some designs and rules out others. Anodised work costs more than powder coat and is harder to match across batches. Anodising is the better choice where a wall will take handling at ground level.

Marine grade specifications exist for both finishes and they are worth paying for inside a narrow band. Within a few hundred metres of Port Phillip Bay, Western Port, the Bellarine or the Surf Coast, salt deposition on a sheltered face that rain does not wash is a real mechanism and the upgraded coating is the sensible answer. Twenty kilometres inland the same specification buys nothing. Paying marine rates in Sunbury is money spent against a problem that is not present. Installers who work a particular stretch of coast know where the exposure genuinely drops off.

Colour choice has a practical consequence on this material that brochures do not mention. Dark charcoals and blacks are overwhelmingly the fashion on Victorian extensions and they absorb far more heat than mid tones, which increases thermal movement across the panel and makes any oil canning more visible. A dark north or west facing aluminium wall in Melbourne reaches surface temperatures well above the air temperature on a February afternoon. Dark colours are not a mistake for that reason alone. It does mean the installer should size the expansion allowance for the colour actually chosen rather than for a standard case.

Movement and Oil Canning

Aluminium expands roughly twice as much as steel for the same temperature change, and Victoria gives it plenty to work with. A dark panel on a west facing wall in Bendigo or Shepparton can see a surface temperature swing of sixty degrees or more between a July dawn and a February afternoon, and a three metre length will grow several millimetres across that range. The movement in itself does no harm at all. What is not harmless is a system fixed so that the movement has nowhere to go.

Which is why fixing method matters more on this material than on any other in the series. Panels have to be held so they can slide, which means fixing through a slotted hole with the fastener not fully tightened, or clipping into a system designed to float. A panel screwed tight at both ends will buckle in the middle by its second summer or tear at the fixing. That failure is visible from the footpath and it is entirely a workmanship issue rather than a product one. Correcting it means taking the affected panels off and refixing them properly, which nobody does cheaply.

The inland districts need the calculation done rather than estimated. Ballarat, Ballan, Trentham, Bendigo, Castlemaine and the Wimmera run frosts through winter and sustained high thirties in summer, so the annual range on an exposed panel is genuinely larger than a Melbourne bayside installation sees. An installer who works those districts sizes the joint accordingly and will say so when asked, and one who quotes a standard gap without reference to the site is quoting a coastal job. Put the question to each installer in plain terms and the answers separate the two groups within a sentence.

Oil canning is the visible waviness that appears in a wide flat metal pan and it deserves its own paragraph because it causes more disputes on aluminium than anything except dents. The waviness is a by-product of how sheet metal is rolled rather than a fault, it shows more in wide pans than narrow ones, and it is most visible in low angle or diffuse light. Melbourne's flat overcast skies through winter are close to the worst lighting condition for it, which is why owners here notice it more than brochures photographed in bright sun would suggest. Wide cassette panels and standing seam trays show it most, while narrow plank profiles barely register it. A narrower profile keeps the pans too small to ripple noticeably, which removes the argument from a long elevation altogether.

There are three practical defences and a good installer uses all of them. Narrower panel widths reduce it, a stiffening rib or pencil round in the pan reduces it further, and a properly flat and correctly set out substrate removes most of what remains. Tension in the fixing makes it worse, which loops back to the floating fixing question. Nothing on that list removes it completely from a wide flat pan and any installer promising a perfectly flat aluminium wall is overselling.

Being told about it beforehand is what separates a satisfied owner from an unhappy one. Where a design calls for wide flat panels on a long elevation, the sensible conversation happens at quoting stage with a sample viewed on site in real light rather than under showroom lighting. Anybody who sees it before committing treats it as a property of the material. Owners who meet it for the first time on a finished wall reasonably conclude something has gone wrong. A sample panel held against the actual wall in daylight costs the installer nothing and settles it in a minute.

Hail, Dents and Why Spares Matter

Victoria gets damaging hail and aluminium remembers it. The storms that crossed Melbourne in December 2011 and January 2020 dented metal roofing and cladding across whole suburbs, and a dent in a flat aluminium panel cannot be filled, sanded or pushed out invisibly. Body filler on an aluminium wall shows as a flat patch under raking light and fails at the edges within a few seasons. The repair for a dented panel is a new panel.

Which makes spare panels the single most valuable thing an owner can arrange at installation. Ordering five to ten per cent extra from the original production batch, and storing it flat, dry and out of sunlight, means a damaged panel can be swapped for one that matches exactly. Colour and gloss drift between batches even within the same product code, and a panel from a run three years later will read as a slightly different colour on a weathered wall. That difference is subtle in a warehouse and obvious on a house. Half a dozen spare lengths in a garage rafter is cheap insurance against a very annoying problem.

Swapping a plank mid run is more work than it sounds on an interlocking system. Because each length clips into its neighbour, reaching a damaged plank in the middle of an elevation means releasing the courses above it in sequence, which is why a single plank swap runs $210 to $580 rather than the cost of the plank. With a cassette system the individual panel unhooks and the job is far quicker. That difference in repairability is worth weighing at selection stage if the wall is somewhere things get bumped. A driveway elevation and a courtyard elevation are not the same risk and need not use the same system.

Insurance treats hail damage to cladding as a sudden event and it is generally covered, subject to the policy. An assessor works from pictures taken while the damage is untouched, so clearing up or having a go at the repair first tends to weaken an owner's own position. The storm damage repairs page covers the immediate steps and the sequence. Where panels are no longer available, a partial re clad of the affected elevation becomes the realistic answer and the policy wording decides who pays for it.

Impact at ground level is the other common source, and a different material for the bottom metre prevents most of it. Wheelie bins, trailers, ladders, mowers and reversing cars account for most of the dents on residential aluminium below waist height, and the usual answer is to change material below waist height rather than to change the wall. Fibre cement, masonry or a rendered plinth to sill height with aluminium above is a common and sensible arrangement on Victorian extensions. The junction between the two has to be flashed properly, which the cladding repairs page covers along with repair method for each material. Getting that flashing right at the outset is far cheaper than chasing water out of a wall later.

Fixings, Mixed Metals and Installation

Galvanic corrosion is the failure that catches aluminium jobs near the water and it is entirely avoidable. Put two dissimilar metals in contact with moisture between them and the less noble one corrodes, which on a wall means a mild steel or plain galvanised screw in an aluminium panel within reach of salt air. The visible result is a rust streak running down from every fastener and a panel pitting around the hole, usually within two winters. Anywhere within reach of Port Phillip, Western Port or the open coast, this is the aluminium complaint installers hear most often.

What prevents it is specification rather than skill, and the cost is trivial. Stainless fasteners of the right grade, or fasteners supplied by the panel manufacturer as part of the system, together with isolation where aluminium meets a steel frame, solve it completely at a cost measured in dollars per square metre. Copper is the other metal to keep away from aluminium, which matters where a copper gutter or downpipe discharges across a wall. Ask which fasteners are being used and whether they came with the system. Any installer who works near the water answers that without hesitating.

Behind the panels the wall build up does the weatherproofing and the aluminium does the shedding. That means a vapour permeable membrane as the drainage plane, battens or top hats creating a drained and ventilated cavity, and flashings at every opening, penetration and change of material. In a heating climate the permeable membrane matters more than owners realise, because a heated Victorian house drives moisture outward through the wall for months and it needs a way out from behind a metal skin that will not let it pass. How much insulation fits in a stud cavity and what it delivers here is set out on the wall and ceiling insulation page. Doing both while the wall is open is the only time either is inexpensive.

Set out is where an aluminium job is won or lost and it happens on paper before anything arrives on site. The panel module has to be resolved against window positions, floor levels, the parapet and the base line, so that cut panels land somewhere sensible and the joints line up across openings. A good installer produces a set out drawing and works from it. An installer starting at one corner and working across until they run out is how walls end up with a forty millimetre sliver at the far end and joints that miss every window head by an inch.

Put in a request for that drawing before a single panel is ordered. A drawing is the single most reliable indicator of whether an aluminium quote came from somebody who does this work regularly, it costs the installer an hour or two and it is the document that any argument later will be resolved against. The absence of one, and no intention of producing one, tells you a great deal before any price is discussed. It also means any argument about where a joint landed will have nothing to be resolved against. Asking for the drawing early means rarely having to raise it again.

Access drives the price on anything above single storey and it is quoted for the building. Expect $900 to $4,500 for scaffold according to the wall and how long it stands, and note that standing seam in particular cannot be done off ladders at all, since every seam is folded in place down the full length of the tray. Projects that also involve upper level windows, fascia or painting can share that hire between trades, which costs far less than putting it up three times. Lining those trades up inside a single access period is the most dependable saving on a two storey job.

Compliance and Who Signs Off

Once a domestic building job in Victoria passes $10,000 it needs a major domestic building contract and a builder carrying VBA registration, and past $16,000 that builder must also hold domestic building insurance and hand over the certificate before accepting a deposit. The register is public and confirms both a name and the class of registration in about a minute. Material and workmanship are covered by guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law, which the ACCC administers at national level. They hold regardless of whether registration was required for the job, and no contract clause removes them.

In this state those guarantees are handled by Consumer Affairs Victoria, and the dispute path on domestic building work runs through conciliation before it reaches a tribunal. Raising the matter with the builder in writing comes first, then Domestic Building Dispute Resolution Victoria, which conciliates and can make binding orders. A tribunal hearing at VCAT comes only after those steps have been exhausted. Very few aluminium jobs travel that far, and the ones that do usually turn on a set out or a colour match rather than on the metal. Both of those are settled by documents produced before the order rather than by argument afterwards.

Evidence of suitability is the term that matters on cladding products and it is worth understanding. The National Construction Code, maintained by the Australian Building Codes Board, requires that a material used in a building be shown to be suitable for its purpose, and for an external wall product that means test reports or certification rather than a supplier's opinion. A building surveyor is the person who accepts or rejects that evidence on your project. Collecting that documentation up front, rather than once the panels are on the wall, is the entire point of it.

Bushfire attack level is the other compliance gate and aluminium sits awkwardly in it. The metal has a much lower melting point than steel, so while it is non combustible it can lose integrity under radiant heat, and the systems tested and approved for the higher BAL categories are fewer than the marketing suggests. Ratings that constrain the choice apply across the hill and range districts and through much of the peri urban fringe. Guidance on what the construction requirements involve is published by the Country Fire Authority. Find the rating first and choose the system second, since doing it the other way round wastes everybody's time.

Work on site brings its own obligations administered by WorkSafe Victoria, and two are worth knowing about as an owner. Working at height on a two storey elevation needs proper fall protection rather than a ladder and an optimistic attitude, and where aluminium is replacing cement sheet on a pre-1990 house the existing material is presumed to contain asbestos until tested. That second point turns a straightforward reclad into a two stage job with a gap in the middle for the clearance certificate. Nothing about aluminium changes that sequence, and the presumption applies to the old wall rather than the new one.

Testing first and removing second is the sequence, and the asbestos testing and inspection page covers the laboratory side of it. Where the result comes back positive, the wall goes to a licensed removalist before any aluminium is ordered, which the asbestos removal page sets out along with the clearance requirements. Building that gap into the programme at quoting stage prevents a crew standing around waiting for a certificate. Sampling left until the scaffold is standing generally means paying for that scaffold a second time. Laboratory turnaround is usually two to five working days, which is easy to absorb at planning stage and expensive once a crew is on site. Building that window into the programme costs nothing at all.

Planning is the last thing to check and it catches inner suburban projects regularly. Controls for heritage or neighbourhood character can dictate both material and finish where a wall faces the street, and metal on a nineteenth century frontage is knocked back regularly even though nobody objects to it out the back. Councils across the inner and middle ring, along with Ballarat, Bendigo and Castlemaine, apply them widely. A phone call to the council settles it quicker than asking any contractor, and the state planning site will list every control sitting over a given title.

Maintenance and the Washdown Clause

Aluminium replaces the repaint cycle with a wash and most owners never read the terms of that trade. Coating warranties are conditional, and the condition is almost always a periodic wash with clean water and a mild detergent, typically every six to twelve months in an ordinary location and every three months in a marine one. The reason has nothing to do with appearance. Airborne salt, industrial fallout and pollen sitting on a coating in a sheltered spot that rain never reaches will degrade it, and the manufacturer knows that, which is why the clause exists.

Sheltered faces are where this actually matters, which is the opposite of what people assume. A wall that gets driving rain is largely self cleaning, while the underside of an eave, a reveal behind a screen, a recessed entry or a panel tucked under a balcony above collects deposits and keeps them. Those are the areas that fail first on bayside houses and they are the areas a garden hose never reaches. Ten minutes with a soft brush on the sheltered spots twice a year is the whole maintenance regime. Anybody uncomfortable at height can have it done as part of a gutter clean. A ladder and a bucket is the entire equipment list on a single storey wall.

The list of things to keep away from it is shorter and worth stating. No abrasive pads, no solvents, no strong alkaline or acidic cleaners, and no pressure washer at close range on a plank system, since the last will drive water up behind the interlock and past the flashings. Cleaning a metal wall with anything aggressive removes the coating that was doing the protecting. Where washing no longer helps, coating the wall in place is available and it is a patch on the problem rather than a return to new.

Inspect the fixings and the sealant at the same time as the wash. Sealant at penetrations and around window trims has a service life well short of the cladding, commonly ten to fifteen years, and replacing a bead is an afternoon while repairing what water did behind it is not. Look for rust staining at any fastener, which means a wrong fixing rather than a failing panel. Check the foot of the wall as well, since paving and garden beds creep upward over the years and swallow the gap the builder left.

Around Victoria

Melbourne's inner suburbs are where most of this work happens and the constraints are planning and access rather than climate. Narrow lots, rear laneways, overlays on street facing elevations and neighbours within a metre of the boundary all shape what is possible, and scaffold on a two metre side setback is its own problem. Installers who work the inner north and the inner east deal with that daily and price it realistically. What a quote from further out sometimes misses is how much of the day goes on access rather than on cladding. Materials carried through a house or down a laneway add hours nobody prices by the square metre. Ask how the panels are getting to the wall.

Salt becomes the question along the bay, out on the Peninsula and around the Bellarine and Surf Coast, and the band it applies to is narrower than most owners assume. Close to the water, a marine specification coating and stainless fixings from the system supplier earn their cost, and the coating guarantee will usually spell that out in its own conditions. A kilometre back from the beach the exposure drops sharply. Local installers know where that line sits on their own patch better than any general rule states it.

Ballarat, Bendigo, Castlemaine, Daylesford and the goldfields towns bring two things at once. The temperature range is the widest in the state, which makes the expansion allowance a calculation rather than a habit, and the housing stock is heavily heritage controlled, which frequently rules aluminium out on a frontage while leaving it entirely available at the rear. Freight on long panel lengths is also a real line item from Melbourne, since the material is light but bulky and marks easily in transit. Ask whether a local supplier can shorten that leg.

Up through the hill districts east of Melbourne, across the ranges north of it and down into the Otways, the bushfire rating drives the whole conversation and belongs at the front of it. A rating comes out of what is growing nearby, how the land falls and how far the house sits from it, applies to new construction and not backwards, and a reclad counts as new construction. The systems available at the higher categories are more limited than the brochures imply. Take the rating to the surveyor and get a ruling on what the wall may carry, which is worth having before anybody picks a colour.

Geelong, Gippsland and the Murray towns round out the picture with a practical point about availability. Fewer installers specialise in metal facade work outside the metropolitan area, so lead times are longer and the choice is narrower, and a Melbourne based installer will price travel and accommodation into a regional job. Asking locally first is worth the phone call, and where the answer is nobody, a bundled job that justifies the travel makes better economics than a single small elevation. Those small jobs high up, where the access sum decides everything, are dealt with on the gable end cladding page.

Costs in Detail

Interlocking plank systems supplied and installed sit between $165 and $335 a square metre in Victoria in 2026, with the profile and the supplier accounting for most of the range. Sheet in standing seam lands between $240 and $480 a square metre and cassette systems between $275 and $560, the difference being the support framing and the precision the open joints demand. Composite panel on feature areas prices similarly to cassette work once the folding and subframe are counted. Not one of those figures includes the framing correction a renovation needs. Over straight framing on a new build that line is small or absent. A century old weatherboard house can turn it into the largest single item in the quote.

Trims, corners and the flashings at base and window heads run $32 to $85 a metre and they are a larger share of a small job than of a large one. An elevation with several windows, a door and two external corners can carry more linear metres of trim than a plain wall twice its size, and a quote that prices the panel area without listing the trim schedule has left out real money. On plank systems the trims are also what make or break the appearance, since a badly mitred corner is the first thing a visitor's eye finds. Ask for the trim schedule as a separate line so it can be compared across quotes.

Framing behind the panels adds $45 to $110 a square metre depending on whether it is top hats over a sound wall or a full batten grid with packing to correct a century of movement. This line is frequently larger on a Victorian weatherboard house than anybody expects and it is the item most often left out of a cheap quote. Ask how the substrate will be checked and what happens if it is out. A rate per square metre for packing and correction in the quote is the honest way to handle it.

Repairs price by the piece rather than by area. A dented or damaged panel replaced runs $320 to $1,100 depending on the system, the location on the wall and whether a matching panel exists. A single plank swapped mid run in an interlocking system runs $210 to $580 because of the sequence involved in reaching it. Recoating an aged aluminium wall in place costs $50 to $105 a square metre and is a compromise rather than a restoration, since a site applied coating will not match a factory finish for longevity.

Access and disposal sit outside every rate above. Reckon $900 to $4,500 for scaffold by wall and duration, and $400 to $1,600 to take ordinary strip out waste away, a good deal more once licensed asbestos waste enters the picture. Aluminium offcuts have scrap value, which occasionally shows up as a small credit on a large job and more often does not. Worth asking which yard the old material ends up in and whether anything comes back. Metal recyclers pay by weight and aluminium is light, so the credit is rarely more than a token. Anybody claiming otherwise should be asked to put it in as a named deduction.

A whole house in aluminium systems lands between $30,000 and $82,000 in 2026 and the spread is wide for good reasons. System choice, the state of the existing frame, access, the trim schedule and whether the wrap and insulation are upgraded at the same time all move it. Two storey work sits at the upper end. A cement sheet wall coming off under licence puts another $4,500 to $18,000 on the job before a single panel is delivered. That last figure is why an inspection before quoting is worth its cost on any pre-1990 house.

What to Look Out For

The clearest warning sign on aluminium work is an installer with no set out drawing and no intention of drawing one. Everything that makes this material look right depends on the module being resolved against the openings before anything is ordered, and starting at a corner and working across is how a wall ends up with a sliver panel and joints that miss the window heads. Ask for the drawing at quoting stage. The response sorts the field faster than the price does.

Watch for silence on the core where composite panel is proposed. The product identified precisely, the filling named, the supporting test result or certificate and the standard behind it are all one email away from any supplier worth dealing with. A colour chart, a brochure claim or a comparison to a better known panel is not that document. For a house the stakes are lower than on an apartment building and the question is still worth asking, because the answer tells you what sort of supply chain you are dealing with.

Be careful with quotes that price the panel area and nothing else. Framing and substrate correction, the trim and flashing schedule, the membrane behind the cladding, the fastener specification and the access arrangement are all real costs on this material, and a quote listing only square metres of aluminium is either going to grow or going to leave things out. Put those items back into the lowest quote and most of the distance between it and the rest disappears. Where it does not, the remaining difference is worth understanding rather than simply accepting.

Watch for fixings that are not part of the system, particularly anywhere within reach of salt air. Plain galvanised screws in aluminium near the bay produce rust streaks down a new wall inside two winters and there is no cosmetic fix once it starts. The same applies to a copper downpipe discharging across an aluminium wall. Ask what fasteners are being used and whether the manufacturer supplied them. A system fastener costs a few cents more than a generic screw and carries the warranty with it. Quiet substitution is what gets a coating claim declined years later.

Finally, be wary of anybody promising a perfectly flat aluminium wall. Waviness across a broad pan comes with the way metal is rolled rather than indicating a fault, it reads strongest under the soft light Melbourne has for half the year, and the honest answer is to narrow the pans, add a stiffening rib and get the substrate straight. An installer who explains that at quoting stage and shows you a sample on site is telling you the truth. Anybody promising a dead flat metal wall has set up a dispute for month eight.

How to Get Comparable Quotes

Open by describing the wall, what is currently on it and what you are hoping for. A first floor addition, a rear extension, replacing hail damaged panels or reskinning a tired wall are four different briefs and they attract different trades. Mention what you already know, the wall that is out of plumb, the panel the trailer caught, the colour you cannot find any more, because what an installer cannot see gets priced as risk, while what they can see gets priced as work. Volunteering it early is the least expensive advantage an owner has on a job like this.

Then put an identical list of questions to everybody. The system and manufacturer, the core specification where composite is proposed, the finish and its written warranty, the set out drawing, how the substrate gets checked and corrected, the support framing, the fastener specification, the membrane and flashing schedule, the expansion allowance and what it was calculated from, access, lead time, spares and both warranties. Identical wording put to each installer is what gives the difference between their figures any meaning. Ten minutes drafting that list before the first visit repays itself. It also keeps the third conversation from wandering away from the first two. Keep the same order of questions each time and the answers line up on the page.

Add the spares request to every conversation. Five to ten per cent of the panel area from the original batch, stored flat and out of the light, is the difference between a swapped panel that disappears and a patch that reads as a different colour for the life of the wall. It costs a few hundred dollars at order stage and cannot be bought later at any price. Store them flat in a garage rafter rather than leaning against a wall in the sun.

Then compare the methods before the totals. Two quotes agreeing on the system, the framing correction, the trim schedule, the fasteners and the expansion allowance are genuinely competing, and whatever separates them is useful information. One coming in lower by exactly the framing correction, the trims and the manufacturer's fasteners has quoted a different wall, and the sections above describe how that wall looks by its second summer. Go back to that installer with the missing items and see whether the figure moves.

Keep the documents afterwards and store them where they will survive a change of ownership. System and manufacturer, product code and colour reference, the core documentation, the coating warranty with its washdown conditions, the fastener specification, the set out drawing, photographs of the framing and membrane before the panels went on, and the spares. That photograph set tells the next tradesperson what is behind the aluminium without anybody removing a panel. Anyone carrying out a building inspection reads a file like that as evidence the work was done properly. Buyers pay more readily for a wall whose history is documented. Nothing on a finished aluminium elevation can be verified by looking at it.