Cladding Repair Service Cost WA 2026 - Complete Pricing Guide

Cladding Repair Costs in Western Australia for 2026

Cladding repair pricing in this state turns on two questions before it turns on any measurement: what the material is, and what condition the wall behind it is in. The maintenance end of the range is cheap. Resealing and reflashing joints runs $35 to $85 a metre and is the most valuable preventative job on any clad wall. Refixing cladding that has worked loose is $45 to $110 a square metre. Replacing weatherboards comes in at $55 to $130 a linear metre, a Colorbond wall sheet at $160 to $420 and a damaged fibre cement sheet at $280 to $650.

The larger end of the range is recladding. Taking a wall back and recladding it properly, with new sarking, corrected flashings and compliant fixings, is $130 to $320 a square metre. Removing asbestos cement sheeting adds $55 to $140 a square metre with disposal, and that work has to be done by somebody licensed for it once the area passes the homeowner limit. Licensed work is asbestos removal and identification is asbestos testing and inspection.

Western Australia has less cladding than the eastern states and that shapes the market. Double brick cavity construction dominates Perth housing, so clad walls here are concentrated in upper storeys of two-storey homes, framed additions and granny flats, gable and parapet infills, patio and alfresco enclosures, and the older housing stock sheeted in asbestos cement before 1990. Finding a contractor who works on cladding every week is harder here than finding a bricklayer.

Three local conditions then decide what tends to fail. Airborne salt from the Indian Ocean attacks fixings and coatings on coastal blocks. The north west sits in cyclonic wind regions with fixing requirements that metropolitan practice does not meet. And severe termite pressure across the Perth metropolitan area means timber framing behind cladding is at genuine risk, which brings in termite inspection before any wall is closed back up.

Where Cladding Actually Is on a WA House

Working out what you have is the first job, and in Western Australia the answer is usually narrower than people expect. A typical Perth house built between the 1960s and today is double brick, meaning two leaves of brickwork with a cavity between them, on a concrete slab. There is no cladding on it at all. The brick is the weather barrier, the structure and the finish, so WA has a deep bricklaying trade and a thin cladding one. Any cladding on such a house is on something added to it.

Five situations cover almost all residential cladding here. Upper storeys on two-storey homes are frequently framed and clad to save weight and cost over a second leaf of brick. Additions, granny flats and ancillary dwellings are commonly timber or steel framed. Gable ends, parapet infills and the triangular section above a wall plate are often sheeted. Patio, alfresco and carport enclosures are clad almost by definition. And a substantial slice of the pre-1990 stock, particularly state housing and country housing, is sheeted in asbestos cement.

Each of those has a different failure pattern. Upper storey cladding fails at flashings and at the junction with the brickwork below. Additions fail where the new work meets the old. Gable sheeting fails from behind, because nobody looks at it. Patio enclosures fail at the bottom edge where water splashes up. Asbestos cement fails by cracking at fixings and at corners.

Identifying the material matters as much as finding the fault. Modern fibre cement from manufacturers such as James Hardie carries product markings on the back of the sheet. Older asbestos cement sheet generally carries no such marking. Thickness, the pattern of the fixings, the feel of a cut edge and the age of the building all contribute, but none of them is proof, so a sample test is the only honest answer on a pre-1990 building.

Fibre Cement and Weatherboard

Modern fibre cement is the default cladding on new framed work in Western Australia and it fails in predictable, cheap-to-fix ways when it is caught early. The material is cement reinforced with cellulose fibre, pressed and cured, and it is dimensionally stable, termite resistant and non-combustible. What it is not is waterproof at its edges. A cut edge that has not been sealed and painted wicks moisture, swells and then delaminates in layers, so damage almost always starts at the bottom of a sheet, at a window reveal, or at a cut around a service penetration.

Fixing is the other failure that turns up constantly. Fibre cement needs the right fastener at the right spacing and the right distance from the edge, and a nail driven too close to an edge or over-driven through the surface starts a crack that opens with the first season of movement. On a wall where multiple sheets show cracking radiating from the fixings, the problem is the fixing specification rather than the material.

Timber weatherboard appears on older and architect-designed houses and in the South West where the look suits the setting. It fails by paint breakdown first and then rot, concentrated at the bottom board, at end grain where a board meets a stop, and anywhere a downpipe or a garden bed keeps it wet. Replacing individual boards is $55 to $130 a linear metre and the main cost driver is matching a discontinued profile. Both materials reward maintenance out of all proportion to its cost. Keeping the paint film intact, keeping cut edges sealed, keeping garden beds and reticulation away from the bottom edge and keeping a clear gap between the cladding and the ground will roughly double the service life. That is exterior painting work and it is far cheaper than carpentry services replacing boards.

Asbestos Cement Sheeting and the WA Legacy

Western Australia carries a heavier asbestos legacy than any other state and it changes how cladding work is approached on any older building here. Asbestos cement sheet was used extensively as external wall cladding, as eaves lining, as wet area lining and as roofing across Australia until the late 1980s, with manufacture of asbestos products ending in 1987 and a national ban on use taking effect at the end of 2003. In this state the material appears right through the suburban stock built before 1990, through country housing, and through sheds and outbuildings of every description.

In its bonded form the sheet is not dangerous while it is intact, painted and undisturbed. The fibres are locked in a cement matrix and nothing is released. The hazard begins when somebody drills it, cuts it, breaks it to fit a bin, water blasts it or sands the paint off it. That is exactly what ordinary cladding repair involves, so identification has to come before anybody picks up a tool.

Western Australian rules on this are specific and sit with WorkSafe. A homeowner may remove up to 10 square metres of non-friable asbestos themselves, although WorkSafe recommends using a licensed removalist regardless of the area. Above 10 square metres, or for any friable asbestos, licensed removal is mandatory. Three licence categories exist: a Class A removalist for all asbestos including friable material, a Class B removalist for non-friable only, and a licensed assessor who does air monitoring and issues clearance certificates. Licensed removal must be notified to WorkSafe at least five days before it starts.

Removal runs $55 to $140 a square metre including disposal at a licensed facility, and the figure varies with access, height, how brittle the sheet is and travel to the nearest disposal site, which in regional WA can be hundreds of kilometres. Encapsulation, meaning painting and sealing the sheet in place, is a legitimate option on sound cladding and far cheaper at $22 to $45 a square metre, but it defers the problem instead of resolving it. Requirements are published by WorkSafe Western Australia with national guidance from Safe Work Australia.

Colorbond and Metal Wall Cladding

Metal wall cladding is common on WA patios, sheds, additions and contemporary homes, and its failures are mostly about the fixings and the edges rather than the sheet. Prepainted steel sheet, sold under the Colorbond name and manufactured by BlueScope, with roll-formed profiles from Lysaght and Stramit widely available in Perth, has a zinc or zinc-aluminium coating under a baked paint finish. It performs very well while that coating system is intact. Every cut edge, every screw penetration and every scratch to the substrate is a point where corrosion can start, and in a coastal environment it will.

The failure pattern on a WA coastal block is distinctive. Rust blooms appear first at cut ends, at the bottom edge where sheets sit closest to splash and salt, and around fasteners where the sealing washer has perished and let moisture under the head. On a sheltered inland wall the same cladding can look new at thirty years. On a west-facing wall two streets from the beach it can be streaking at twelve.

Galvanic corrosion is the mistake that catches people doing their own repairs. Putting a plain galvanised or a copper fastener into a zinc-aluminium coated sheet, or letting an aluminium gutter bracket sit against steel, sets up a reaction that eats one of the two metals. Replacement fasteners have to match the sheet system, and near the coast that means a Class 4 corrosion rated fastener as a minimum. Individual sheet replacement is $160 to $420 depending on length, profile and access. The practical problem is profile matching, because roll-formed profiles and colour ranges change, so a twenty year old wall may need a whole elevation redone to look right. Where the whole wall is going anyway, that is render repair territory if the finish is changing, or a metal re-sheet with the roofing trade through roof repairs.

Combustible Cladding and the State-Wide Audit

This section concerns apartment and commercial buildings, not houses, and the Western Australian picture turned out better than many expected. After the Grenfell Tower fire in London in 2017, Western Australia ran a state-wide cladding audit from July 2017 to June 2019. It covered Building Code of Australia Class 2, 3, 4 and 9 buildings of three storeys or more, built or refurbished after 1 January 2000. Class 1 buildings, which means ordinary houses, were not included at all, so a standard Perth home was never in scope.

The results are worth knowing if you own in a strata scheme. Across 1,795 privately owned buildings that were physically inspected, 475 showed suspected combustible cladding. Preliminary risk assessment reduced that to 258 still under review, and detailed assessment concluded with 14 high-risk and 38 moderate-risk buildings and no buildings in the extreme-risk category. Separately, 1,914 public and university buildings were assessed, 1,783 were cleared and 38 required remedial action.

The materials at issue are aluminium composite panel with a polyethylene core and expanded polystyrene rendered systems, both of which look like solid cladding or render from the ground. Identification needs a core sample or product documentation, not a visual assessment, and a strata scheme should have this on record from the audit period. Rectification is $350 to $900 a square metre and is a registered builder job with a building permit, fire engineering input and usually scaffolding. If you are buying into an apartment building constructed or refurbished after 2000, the questions to ask are whether the building was assessed in the audit, what the outcome was, whether any rectification was required and whether it has been completed. The department has continued publishing status updates on rectification progress. Current information is held by Building and Energy, at the Government of Western Australia.

Fixings, Salt and the Coastal Problem

On a Western Australian coastal block the cladding usually outlasts the things holding it up, and that is the repair most often mispriced. Salt arrives as aerosol on the sea breeze, settles on every surface and is hygroscopic, meaning it draws moisture out of the air and keeps a thin wet film on metal long after rain has stopped. The Fremantle Doctor delivers it inland every afternoon through summer. That is why corrosion rates in Cottesloe, Scarborough, Trigg, City Beach and Hillarys are in a different category from Midland or Armadale, even though the distance is only twenty kilometres.

Fixings therefore fail long before the sheet does. Screws rust from the shank out, the sealing washer under the head perishes under ultraviolet, and the fixing loses both its seal and its holding power. The cladding then rattles in wind, water gets in around the fastener, and a wall that looks sound from the street is actually loose. Refixing an elevation with correctly rated fasteners is $45 to $110 a square metre and is often all that is needed.

Specification matters a great deal more than brand. Near the coast, fasteners need a corrosion class appropriate to the exposure, and stainless is the sensible answer within a few hundred metres of breaking surf. Even then, stainless will tea-stain in this environment, and that is cosmetic, not structural. Buildex and Hilti fasteners are widely stocked in Perth across the relevant classes, and a roof plumber or metal cladding contractor will know the rating to specify.

Rinsing is the free maintenance that nobody ever does. Washing down coastal cladding and fixings with fresh water two or three times a year removes the salt before it does its work, and it extends fastener life measurably. It matters most on surfaces not reached by rain, which means under eaves, behind downpipes, on the lee side of parapets and anywhere a verandah roof shelters the wall.

Cyclonic Regions and the North West

Cladding in the north of Western Australia is engineered for a wind event, and a repair that does not restore that engineering has made the building less safe than it was. Design wind speeds come from AS/NZS 1170.2 and the state is not uniform. Perth and the south west sit in the non-cyclonic region. The north west coast sits in the cyclonic regions, and Western Australia applies its own state variation for the most severe category, Region D, which the department describes as a band roughly 50 kilometres wide along the north west coast from approximately Port Hedland in the Pilbara to Carnarvon in the Gascoyne, with the variation applying north of the Tropic of Capricorn. That variation took effect on 1 September 2022 with the adoption of the National Construction Code 2022.

What that means for cladding is a different fixing regime entirely. Cyclonic design has to resist repeated pressure reversals over hours, not a single peak gust, so fixings use cyclone washers that spread load and resist fatigue, spacings are closer, and the load path has to run continuously from the cladding through the battens and framing to the footings. A sheet refixed with metropolitan screw spacing in Karratha is a sheet that will leave the building.

That has a direct effect on who should do the work. A cladding repair in the Pilbara or the Kimberley needs somebody who works in cyclone rated construction and can tell you the fixing specification they are working to. Engineering documentation for the original build should be found before the repair, because matching the original specification is the standard to meet. Emergency preparation and cyclone material for the region comes from the Department of Fire and Emergency Services.

Cost reflects every part of what that involves. Rates in the north west sit 50 to 100 per cent above metropolitan ones once freight, travel, the small contractor pool and the heavier specification are priced in. The wet season also closes the practical working window from roughly November to April, so planning a cladding repair for May gets it done and planning it for January generally does not.

Bushfire Prone Areas and Cladding

If your property is in a designated bushfire prone area, cladding is a fire performance element and not simply a weather barrier. Western Australia has mapped bushfire prone areas and a property inside one is subject to construction requirements based on its Bushfire Attack Level, or BAL, assessed under AS 3959. The level runs from BAL-LOW through BAL-12.5, 19, 29, 40 and up to BAL-FZ for the flame zone, and the cladding requirements tighten at each step. In the Perth hills, the South West, the Great Southern and much of the peri-urban fringe, a great many properties sit inside the mapping.

The relevant point for a repair is that material substitution can breach compliance without anybody noticing. Replacing a non-combustible fibre cement sheet with a timber board, or infilling a gable with a lightweight product that has no tested fire performance, can take a compliant wall out of compliance. The same applies to the small details: gaps that need to be sealed against ember entry, vents that need mesh of a specified aperture, and the junction between cladding and subfloor.

Ember attack rather than flame contact destroys most houses in a bushfire, and embers find gaps. On a clad wall the vulnerable points are the open bottom edge of cladding, unsealed vertical joints, weep holes, penetrations for services and the junction where cladding meets a roof or a verandah. A repair is a good opportunity to close those off, and it costs very little extra while the wall is open. Practically, if the property is in the mapping, ask the contractor to confirm the replacement material and detailing meet the assessed BAL, and keep whatever documentation came with the original build. Where no assessment exists, a BAL assessment costs a few hundred dollars and is better done before you choose materials rather than after. Construction provisions sit with the Australian Building Codes Board and the standards with Standards Australia.

Water Ingress, Flashings and the Weather Barrier

Cladding is one part of a weather barrier and not the whole of it, and most cladding failures are really failures of the parts nobody photographs.

A properly built clad wall works in layers. The cladding itself takes the weather first. Behind it a drainage cavity or a batten space lets any water that gets past run down and out. Behind that, sarking, which is the pliable membrane wrapped over the frame, stops water reaching the timber and lets vapour escape. At every opening, every junction and every termination, a flashing directs water back out. Remove or compromise any one of those and the wall leaks even though the cladding is intact.

Flashings cause a great deal more trouble than cladding does. The junction where an upper storey clad wall meets the brickwork below is the classic Perth failure point, because a flashing there has to be built into the brickwork and lapped correctly under the cladding, and a shortcut is invisible for years. Window and door head and sill flashings are next. Where cladding meets a roof, a verandah or a parapet, the flashing has to turn up behind the cladding and not merely be sealed against the face of it.

Sealant is where most of the shortcuts live. A bead of silicone across the top of a flashing instead of a correct lap will work for three to five years and then fail, and by then the water has been inside the wall for one or two of those. A quote that lists sealant where a flashing belongs is quoting the wrong repair. The giveaway is a leak that recurs at the same spot after being sealed twice.

Symptoms show up inside the house before they show outside. Staining or blistering on the internal lining at the base of a wall, a skirting that has lifted, a musty smell in a built-in robe, a swollen architrave, or paint peeling in a band at one height. Where that appears on an internal wall below an upper storey clad elevation, the flashing at the junction is the first suspect. Internal making good falls to plastering and gyprock repairs and building inspection is the way to get it diagnosed independently.

Rendered and Foam Cladding Systems

Rendered lightweight cladding looks like a masonry wall from the footpath and behaves nothing like one, and that is the source of most of the confusion around it. Two systems account for most of what is out there. Autoclaved aerated concrete panel, sold in Australia under the Hebel name, is a genuine lightweight concrete product, non-combustible, and it renders well. Expanded polystyrene systems use a foam board with a reinforced render coat over it, and these are light, cheap, fast and thermally efficient, but the foam itself is combustible and the render coat is the only thing protecting it. Knowing which of the two you have decides the method and the price of a repair.

Failures are mostly in the render coat and the detailing. Cracking at panel joints, at window corners and where the system meets a different material. Impact damage, which on a foam system leaves a dent that water then sits in. Debonding of the render from the substrate, which sounds hollow when tapped in exactly the way a drummy tile does. And failure at the bottom termination, where the system has to be stopped clear of the ground with a bead that lets water out.

Repairs run $85 to $220 a square metre for render work on a sound substrate, and more where the substrate itself has to be replaced. Patch repairs are visible on textured finishes, so the usual approach is to repair and then recoat the whole elevation to a natural break so the patch is not framed by old coating. Repairs of that kind fall under render and texture coating work.

One Western Australian point is worth adding to that. Reticulation spraying onto a rendered foam wall day after day is remarkably destructive, because bore water carries dissolved minerals and iron that stain the coating and salts that break the render bond from behind. Before repairing a rendered wall at ground level, look at where the sprinklers throw, because repairing it without moving them buys you a repeat in three years. Finishes specific to limestone substrates come under limestone rendering work.

Termite Damage Behind Cladding

Perth sits in one of the higher termite pressure zones in the country, and a clad wall is the ideal place for termites to work undetected. Subterranean termites need moisture and concealment and a clad timber-framed wall provides both. They enter from the soil, travel up inside the cavity behind the cladding where nothing disturbs them, and eat the framing from the inside out. The cladding stays in place and looks normal, so the damage is usually found during unrelated work rather than during an inspection.

The things that make it easy for them are all preventable. Cladding that extends down to or below ground level, a garden bed or mulch built up against the wall, a reticulation head keeping the base of the wall permanently damp, a paved area with no clearance, and timber stored against the cladding. Any cladding repair is an opportunity to correct the ground clearance, and it is the single most useful thing you can do.

Signs worth taking seriously include a hollow sound in framing when tapped through the lining, a skirting that gives under a thumb, mud tubes or shelter tubes on brickwork or a slab edge, a section of cladding that has gone slightly soft, and swarming alates in spring. None of those is proof on its own and all of them justify an inspection at $280 to $550. Where framing has been eaten, the repair is structural work and not cosmetic. Replacing affected studs, plates and noggings before recladding runs $120 to $340 a square metre of wall depending on how much has gone, and on a loadbearing wall it needs temporary support and sometimes an engineer. That is structural repairs work, and the inspection side is termite inspection.

Repainting and Recoating Cladding

Coating costs least of all the cladding maintenance, and it decides how long everything else lasts. On fibre cement and timber, the paint film is the waterproofing. Once it has cracked, chalked or lost adhesion, water reaches the substrate and the countdown starts. Recoating an exterior wall runs $28 to $55 a square metre including preparation, and doing it on schedule instead of waiting until the cladding is already swelling is the difference between a paint job and a replacement job.

Perth conditions are hard on coatings in a specific way. Ultraviolet levels here are high and summer surface temperatures on a north or west facing wall are extreme, which breaks down binders and fades pigments faster than in the southern states. Expect 7 to 10 years from a good exterior acrylic system on a sheltered elevation and 5 to 7 on a west-facing one. Dark colours absorb more heat and fail sooner, which is worth knowing before choosing one.

Preparation determines the outcome and it is where cheap quotes save money. Chalked and failing coating has to come off, not be painted over. Cut edges need sealing before anything is coated. Bare fibre cement needs a sealer before the topcoat. On metal cladding, recoating needs the correct etch or adhesion primer, because an acrylic rolled straight onto a prepainted steel surface will peel in sheets. Dulux and Haymes systems are widely specified across the Perth market for exterior work.

One thing to settle before any recoating of a pre-1990 building. Preparation on old paint means sanding or pressure washing, and on asbestos cement cladding neither is acceptable. Establish the material first, and if it is asbestos cement, the coating approach is gentle cleaning and painting without abrasion, a legitimate form of encapsulation. Trade work sits under exterior painting and painting services.

Licensing, Permits and WA Thresholds

Cladding work can be a handyman job or a registered builder job depending on value and on whether it is structural, so knowing where the lines sit protects you. The regulator for building work here is Building and Energy, which sits inside the Department of Local Government, Industry Regulation and Safety and is headed by a Building Commissioner alongside a Director of Energy Safety. Contractors sometimes name a regulator that no longer exists, so verify any registration number on the current register instead of accepting a letterhead.

Three thresholds shape the paperwork on cladding work. Any fixed-price residential job from $7,500 to $500,000 belongs under a written home building contract. Permitted work above $20,000 brings home indemnity insurance with it, covering deposit loss to $40,000. Deposits are capped at 6.5 per cent of the contract price. All three numbers are specific to Western Australia and differ from the eastern states.

Permits are the part that people most often get wrong. Replacing like-for-like cladding on a small area is usually maintenance and needs no permit. Recladding an elevation in a different material, altering the structure, working on a building in a bushfire prone area where the requirements change, or rectifying combustible cladding on a multi-residential building generally does need a permit from your local government. Ask the question before work starts, because a permit obtained afterwards is harder and more expensive.

Asbestos sits under a separate regime entirely, administered by WorkSafe and not by Building and Energy, with the 10 square metre homeowner limit for non-friable material, mandatory licensing above it and five days notification for licensed removal. The two sets of obligations run in parallel on the same job. Consumer guarantees cover the workmanship regardless of any warranty document, and are enforced by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, while building and construction sits among the matters heard by the State Administrative Tribunal, with the underlying regulations at Western Australian Legislation.

Perth Metropolitan Pricing

The thin cladding trade in Perth is the main thing that shapes pricing here, and it cuts both ways. Because double brick dominates, there are fewer contractors who do cladding as their main work than there would be in Melbourne or Brisbane, so quotes vary more widely and some carpenters price cladding defensively because they do little of it. The flip side is that specialists exist and are worth finding, particularly for metal cladding, where roof plumbers handle wall sheeting competently because the material and fixings are the same ones they use daily.

Geography splits the metropolitan market into three. The coastal strip from Fremantle north through Scarborough and Hillarys and south through Rockingham carries severe salt exposure, so refixing with properly rated fasteners is routine and specification matters more than price. The eastern and northern corridors have the newest framed construction and the most straightforward sheet replacement. The hills and the peri-urban fringe bring bushfire requirements into almost every job.

Height and access drive cost as much as material. Cladding on the upper storey of a two-storey house needs scaffolding or a hired work platform, and that is $450 to $1,600 for the hire and set-up before any cladding is touched. Where several jobs on the upper level can be done during one scaffold hire, including painting, gutters and window work, the saving is real, so ask what else is worth doing while it is up. For larger projects, renovation services cover the work cladding forms part of, and gutter replacement is the job most worth bundling with any upper storey cladding access.

Regional Western Australia Pricing

Regional cladding pricing is driven by three things that have nothing to do with the cladding: travel, freight and where the nearest licensed asbestos disposal site is. Building trades cover Mandurah and Peel, and the South West from Bunbury through Busselton to Margaret River, at modest loadings, and the South West actually has proportionally more clad housing than Perth because timber and weatherboard construction suits the setting. Carpenters and roof plumbers are available through Albany, the Great Southern and Geraldton, though anything beyond a standard profile needs freighting in. Asbestos disposal is the regional cost that surprises people. Bonded asbestos has to go to a facility licensed to accept it, and in parts of the Wheatbelt, the Goldfields and the Gascoyne that can mean a long haul with a covered and sealed load. On a small job the transport can exceed the removal labour, so batching asbestos work across a property, or across neighbouring properties, is worth organising.

In the Pilbara, the Kimberley and the Goldfields, loadings of 45 to 90 per cent are normal. The cyclonic fixing specification in the north adds materials and labour on top of travel. Heat affects the work too, since sealants and coatings have application temperature ranges and a Pilbara summer is outside them for much of the day, which pushes work to early mornings or to the cooler months. The practical advice for regional owners is the same as for pools and tiles: batch everything into one mobilisation and plan around the season instead of reacting to a problem. Simple maintenance such as resealing a joint, rinsing coastal cladding and keeping garden beds back from the wall is within reach locally, and carpentry services can usually cover it between specialist visits.

What to Look Out For in a Cladding Quote

Cladding quotes go wrong in one dominant way, and it comes down to the part of the wall nobody opened. The first and biggest warning sign is a quote written without a sheet being removed. Cladding hides the frame, the sarking and the insulation, and a price given from the outside is an estimate. Ask for one or two sheets to be lifted and photographed before the quote is finalised, and expect to pay a small inspection fee for that, because it is the cheapest money on the whole job.

Second, on any building that predates 1990, ask what the asbestos plan is before anything is quoted. A contractor who shrugs at this is a contractor to avoid, because the answer changes the method, the licensing, the disposal and the price. Get a test result instead of an opinion, and remember the 10 square metre homeowner limit and the five day notification for licensed removal. Third, look for flashings in the written scope. A quote that proposes sealant where a flashing belongs is quoting a repair that will fail in three to five years, and the recurring leak at the same spot is the proof. Where an upper storey clad wall meets brickwork below, ask specifically how that junction will be detailed, because it is where water most commonly enters a Perth two-storey house.

Fourth, pin the specification down in writing before work starts. Which fastener and what corrosion class, for a property this far from the coast. What cladding product and profile, and is it still available or is a whole elevation being matched. In a bushfire prone area, does the material meet the assessed level. In the north west, what fixing specification applies for the wind region. Vague answers here mean the contractor has not thought it through.

Last, work through the paperwork side. Registration number verified against the Building and Energy register rather than a business card, a written contract where the value crosses $7,500, home indemnity insurance where a permit is needed and the value exceeds $20,000, and a deposit no higher than 6.5 per cent of the contract price. Ask as well who is obtaining any building permit. Independent assessment is available through building inspection and structural questions through structural repairs.