Restumping and Reblocking VIC 2026 - Get Free Quotes

The Building Permit Nobody Expects to Need

Owners approach restumping as maintenance and the system treats it as building work, which is where most of the trouble on this job starts. Replacing the stumps under a house alters its structural support, which places it firmly within structural repairs, and structural work of that kind generally requires a building permit issued by a registered building surveyor before anything begins. There is no exemption for work that happens to be under the floor. The permit is what makes the work lawful and what makes it defensible at sale.

That surprises people because the work happens out of sight. Nothing about the house changes visually, no extension is added and nothing is demolished, so the instinct is to treat it as a repair, and plenty of contractors have historically been happy to proceed on that basis. That history is exactly why so many Melbourne houses have unpermitted reblocking in their past.

Doing it without a permit creates a problem that surfaces later. Unpermitted structural work can be discovered during a sale, by a purchaser's inspector or when a council becomes aware of it, and resolving it after the fact through a building permit for work already completed is slower, more expensive and occasionally impossible. Purchasers and their solicitors ask about it directly now.

The permit process is not onerous and it protects you. A registered building surveyor assesses the proposed work, the permit sets out what is required, and mandatory inspections at defined stages mean somebody independent has confirmed the stumps were set correctly before the floor went back on top of them. That confirmation matters on the most expensive structural work a period home will ever receive.

Settle at the quoting stage who obtains the permit. Some builders include it and manage the process, others expect the owner to arrange it, and the difference is worth several thousand dollars and a few weeks, so it needs establishing before you compare figures. A quote excluding the permit is not comparable with one that includes it. Get the answer in writing before you weigh the numbers against each other. Permit and surveyor fees generally sit between $700 and $2,500.

Registration matters alongside the permit. Domestic building work above the relevant threshold requires a registered building practitioner, and registration is administered by the Building and Plumbing Commission, whose register can be checked before you sign anything. It takes a minute and it is the simplest due diligence available.

Contracts and insurance follow from the value. A major domestic building contract must be in writing above the defined amount, domestic building insurance applies above the relevant threshold, and consumer guidance is published by Consumer Affairs Victoria. On a full restumping job both will almost certainly apply. Where a dispute arises over domestic building work it is heard by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, and VCAT publishes information on how that process runs.

Reading the Symptoms Before You Call Anyone

A house tells you its stumps are failing long before anything dramatic happens, and the signs are ones people live with for years. Floors that slope noticeably, a marble that rolls to one corner of a room, and a bounce or spring underfoot in one area are the classic three. Any one of them on its own means little, and all three together mean a good deal.

Doors and windows are the most reliable early indicator. A door that has started catching at the top corner, a window that has become difficult to slide, or a door that swings open on its own where it never used to are all reporting that the frame around them has moved out of square. Owners typically plane the door and move on, which treats only the symptom. A door planed twice over five years is a house that has moved twice, and that is a record worth keeping even if nobody wrote it down at the time.

Gaps at skirtings and cornices tell the same story from a different angle. A skirting board separating from the floor, a cornice pulling away from the wall or the ceiling, and cracking that runs diagonally from a door or window corner all follow from the structure below shifting. Repainting over that cracking is the equivalent of planing the door.

Get under the house with a torch if you can do it safely. Stumps leaning out of vertical, stumps that have sunk so the bearer sits on packing rather than on the stump, timber that crumbles when pressed with a screwdriver, and daylight visible between a bearer and its stump are all direct evidence. Take a torch, wear old clothes and do not go in if the space is too tight to move safely. The subfloor, meaning the void between the ground and the underside of the floor, is genuinely hazardous when it is tight, and a photograph taken from the access hatch is better than a trip to hospital. Tell somebody you are going under.

Use a level or a long straight edge across the floor and record the numbers. A few millimetres of fall across a room is common in an old house and rarely alarming, while twenty or thirty millimetres across a single room is a different conversation, and having actual measurements turns a vague complaint into something a builder can quote against. A long spirit level and a tape measure is all the equipment needed.

Photograph and date what you find, then repeat it in six months. Whether the movement is progressing matters more than how bad it is today, and a settled house that has been stable for decades is a very different proposition from one that is actively moving. A structural inspection is the sensible next step where the picture is unclear. Movement that has stopped and movement that is continuing call for different responses.

Melbourne's Reactive Clay and Why Houses Move Here

Victoria has some of the most reactive soil in the country and Melbourne sits on a good deal of it. Clay soils take up water and swell, then dry out and shrink, and a house founded in that ground is lifted and lowered through every seasonal cycle it experiences. Nothing about the house causes that and nothing about the house prevents it. What the house can do is be founded deeply enough that the movement happens below the footings and not under them.

The basalt plains through the west and north are the well known ones. Suburbs across Footscray, Sunshine, Braybrook, Keilor and out through Melton and Sunbury sit on heavy clay, and homes in those areas experience more movement than equivalent houses on sandier ground closer to the bay. Two identical houses ten kilometres apart can have very different histories for that reason alone.

Yarra silt and river flats behave differently and cause their own problems. Ground along the river corridors is variable and frequently soft, and a house partly founded on filled or alluvial ground and partly on firmer material is stressed at the transition, which produces movement concentrated in one part of the building. That pattern is recognisable once you know to look for it, since the damage clusters in one area.

Drought followed by heavy rain is the pattern that does the damage. A long dry period shrinks clay away from footings and the house settles, then sustained rain swells it again and pushes the house back up, and repeated cycles of that gradually work stumps out of position. Victoria delivers that sequence with some regularity, which is why reblocking is a standing trade here.

Trees are the local factor owners can actually control. A large tree close to a house draws enormous volumes of moisture out of clay soil, drying the ground on one side of the building and producing exactly the differential movement that cracks plaster, and the effect is strongest during dry summers. Removing a mature tree brings its own risk, since the ground it was drying can then swell, so that decision deserves professional advice.

Drainage is the other controllable and it is frequently the cheapest intervention available. A downpipe discharging beside a footing, stormwater running under a house, a leaking pipe or ground falling toward the building all concentrate moisture where it drives movement, and correcting that through plumbing services costs a fraction of what restumping does. Watch where water goes during a genuine downpour.

Fixing the stumps without addressing the water simply resets the clock. New stumps in ground that is still cycling will move in the same way the old ones did, more slowly because they are better founded, but in the same direction and for the same reason. Dealing with the water first is what makes the structural work last.

Why Old Stumps Fail

Most Victorian homes on stumps were originally set on timber, commonly red gum or messmate, and those species were chosen because they are durable in ground contact. Durable is not permanent, and a stump installed in 1925 has had a century of conditions working on it. Nobody expected it to last that long and many of them nearly have.

Rot concentrates at the ground line and that is the detail worth knowing. The section below ground is starved of oxygen and the section well above it stays dry, so the damage occurs in a band right at the soil surface where moisture and air are both present, and a stump can look sound at both ends while being seriously compromised in the middle. That is the single most useful thing to understand about stump condition.

That is why a visual glance from a distance misleads people. Someone shining a torch across a subfloor sees upright timber and concludes it is fine, whereas pressing a screwdriver into the timber at ground level tells you what condition it is actually in. Sound timber resists and rotted timber gives way with almost no pressure. Test several stumps across several, since condition varies enormously across a single subfloor depending on drainage, shade and how close each one sits to a downpipe. The worst are usually on the low side of the block.

Termites are the other major cause and Victoria has them despite a common belief otherwise. Timber stumps and bearers are exactly what termites are looking for, and subfloor damage frequently goes unnoticed for years because nobody is down there, so a termite inspection through termite inspection and treatment belongs alongside any subfloor assessment. Melbourne is not termite free and treating it as though it is has cost owners a great deal.

Some stumps fail through settlement rather than decay. A stump set on inadequate footing, or on ground that has since been disturbed by a trench, a tree removal or drainage work, sinks under load while remaining perfectly sound as a piece of timber. That is why the cause matters as much as the condition.

Previous packing is a finding worth taking seriously. Where somebody has driven timber or steel packers between a bearer and a stump to correct a sag, it means the problem was recognised and patched rather than fixed, and packing works loose over time and tells you the house has been moving for a while. Note how many stumps have packing, since the count tells you how widespread the problem is.

Site Classification and What the Letters Mean

Australian Standard AS 2870 covers residential slabs and footings and it classifies sites according to how much the ground moves. That classification is what an engineer or builder uses to decide footing depth and size and it is written into the standard, and knowing yours tells you a great deal about why your house has behaved the way it has. Most owners have never seen a classification for their own property. It is not something that gets handed over at settlement, and on an older house it may never have existed at all.

The classes run from stable to severely reactive. Class A is sand and rock with little movement, S is slightly reactive clay, M is moderately reactive, H1 and H2 are highly reactive, E is extremely reactive, and P covers problem sites needing individual engineering assessment. Most Melbourne suburbs sit somewhere in the middle of that range. Knowing whether yours is M or H2 changes what a competent footing looks like.

Melbourne is heavily weighted toward the reactive end. Large parts of the western and northern suburbs classify as M, H1 or H2, which means the ground under those houses is expected to move meaningfully between a wet winter and a dry summer, and footings there need to be deeper than a stable site would require. Depth is what takes a footing below the zone where the moisture change happens.

That matters for restumping because it drives the footing specification. A stump on a highly reactive site needs to reach below the zone where seasonal moisture change is significant, and a footing sized for a sandy site installed on Melbourne clay will move regardless of how good the stump above it is. The stump is only ever as good as what it stands on.

Find out what classification the quote assumes and what footing depth follows from it. Standards are published through Standards Australia, and a builder who works on Melbourne clay routinely will answer that question without hesitation. Vagueness there tells you something.

A soil report settles it where the answer is unclear. On a site with a history of significant movement, or where a neighbour has had structural problems, paying for a classification before the work rather than guessing at it is a reasonable step and a structural engineer can advise what is warranted. On a straightforward site it is usually unnecessary.

Existing houses were frequently built before any of this applied. Homes from the 1920s were set on stumps at whatever depth the builder used, with no classification and no engineering, which is a large part of why they have moved and why the replacement footings need to be better than the originals. Restumping is an opportunity to correct a century old shortcoming.

Living Through the Work

Restumping is disruptive in ways owners underestimate and planning for it makes the fortnight considerably easier. The house is jacked in stages, the floor moves while people are in it, and doors and windows may not operate normally partway through the process. Plan around that in advance. Front doors and external doors are the ones that matter most, since being unable to lock the house properly for a night is a genuine problem.

Most households can stay in the house and some should not. A full lift on a large house, a job involving significant bearer replacement, or a household with mobility considerations may be better off elsewhere for the worst of it, and that should be decided early. Put it to the builder and see what they recommend for your particular job.

Fragile items should come off walls and shelves before anything starts. Mirrors, framed pictures, glassware in cabinets and anything on a mantelpiece are all at risk while a house is being lifted, and packing them away costs nothing against replacing them. Do the whole house, not only the rooms being worked on.

Services under the floor need consideration before jacking begins. Plumbing, gas lines, electrical cabling and heating ducts all run through the subfloor and all are affected when the structure above them moves, which is why a competent crew identifies and manages them in advance. Mention anything you know about, particularly if plumbing or heating work has been done under there.

Expect noise, dust and vehicle movements for the duration. Excavation, concrete delivery, spoil removal and jacking are all noisy, and neighbours appreciate being told beforehand, particularly on the tight inner Melbourne streets where these houses tend to be. Parking for a concrete truck should be sorted out in advance.

Site safety obligations apply throughout and they are not optional. Excavation, working under a supported structure and confined subfloor conditions are all covered by workplace safety duties, with requirements published by WorkSafe Victoria, and a crew working in a way that looks unsafe should be raised with the builder. Propping and support under a lifted house is not an area for improvisation.

Concrete Stumps or Adjustable Steel

Two replacement options dominate Victorian restumping and each suits different situations. Precast concrete stumps are the traditional answer, set in a hole with concrete and finished with a galvanised ant cap, and they are what most full restumping jobs use. They have been the Victorian default for decades. Most reblocked Melbourne houses are sitting on them right now, which is a reasonable endorsement of the material.

Concrete has the advantage of permanence and cost. It will not rot, termites have no interest in it, and it is generally the cheaper option per stump, which matters a great deal on a house needing sixty or eighty of them. Multiply any per stump difference by that number before deciding. Twenty dollars a stump sounds trivial until it is applied eighty times, at which point it is a meaningful sum. Work with totals and not rates.

Its drawback is that it cannot be adjusted afterwards. Once a concrete stump is set the height is fixed, so any future levelling means packing on top of it or replacing it, which is a real consideration on the reactive clay sites where further movement is likely. Nobody wants to do this job twice.

Galvanised adjustable steel stumps solve exactly that problem. They incorporate a threaded adjustment allowing the height to be altered later without excavation, so a house that continues to move can be re-levelled by adjustment. That adjustment is a short visit instead of a fortnight of disruption. On a house you intend to keep for twenty years that difference is the whole argument for the material. On one you plan to sell in three, it probably is not.

That flexibility costs more per stump and it buys something specific. On heavy clay in the western suburbs, on a site with a history of movement, or on a house the owner intends to keep for decades, the ability to adjust in ten years justifies the premium, while on a stable site it may not be. The site and not the preference should decide it.

Establish which is being quoted and why, and get the reasoning behind it. A builder who works on Melbourne clay every week will have a clear view on your particular site, and if two quotes differ substantially the stump type is frequently the reason. Compare like with like before assuming one builder is simply cheaper.

Footing size matters as much as stump material. A stump is only as good as what it sits on, so the excavation depth and the footing dimensions specified for your soil conditions are worth having stated in writing, and that is one of the things the building permit process exists to confirm. Depth and diameter should both appear in the scope.

Jacking, Levelling and the Damage That Comes With It

This is the part of restumping owners are least prepared for and it needs stating plainly. Lifting a house that has settled over decades back toward level means moving a rigid structure that has spent years adjusting to being out of level, and things crack when that happens. Nobody enjoys hearing this and it is better heard before the work than during it.

Plaster is the first casualty and it is unavoidable rather than a sign of poor work. Cornices separate, wall and ceiling plaster cracks, and existing hairline cracks open up, because the geometry the plaster settled into is being changed underneath it. Lime plaster in older homes is particularly unforgiving.

Tiling and rigid finishes suffer the same way. Wall tiles in a bathroom, floor tiles laid over timber, brick chimneys and rendered surfaces are all brittle relative to the movement involved, and a chimney in particular deserves discussion before jacking begins. Old brick chimneys are rigid, heavy and unreinforced, which is a poor combination when a house moves. Some are already cracked before anyone touches the stumps, and photographing their condition beforehand protects both parties. A chimney that comes down during jacking is an expensive argument to have afterwards.

Doors and windows need refitting afterwards more often than not. A door that was planed years ago to suit a dropped frame will bind or gap once the frame returns to square, and that is straightforward work but it is work somebody has to do and pay for. Count your doors and windows and assume most will need attention.

The decision that follows is how far to go. A full lift to true level maximises the cosmetic damage, while a partial correction that removes the worst of the fall and leaves some settlement in place causes less disruption, and an experienced builder will discuss that trade off and expect it. Find out what level of correction is proposed and what it means for the plaster.

Budget for the making good from the outset. Plaster and cornice repair through plastering and gyprock repairs and cornice installation and repairs is a separate trade and a separate cost, and a restumping quote that says nothing about it is describing part of the project. Have those trades priced before you commit, since they are a substantial share of the total. Getting a plasterer through before the restumping starts to look at what is there gives you a realistic figure instead of a guess. It also documents the existing cracking.

Painting completes it and it is rarely included either. Repaired plaster needs finishing and a patched wall will be visible until the room is repainted, so most households end up painting the affected rooms, which sits with ceiling painting and repair for the ceilings and cornices. Doing the plaster and paint together as one coordinated job costs less than two separate mobilisations.

Asbestos, Subfloor Conditions and What Else Gets Found

Homes built before 1990 may contain asbestos and restumping puts people directly into the spaces where it sits. Asbestos cement sheeting was used for subfloor infill panels, for wall cladding on additions and outbuildings, and around service penetrations, and disturbing it releases fibres. It is one of the reasons restumping is not a job to attempt yourself on an older house, since crawling under a period Melbourne home means putting yourself in exactly the space where that material sits.

Establish what is there before anyone works underneath. Testing through asbestos testing and inspection is inexpensive relative to the alternative, and where material is confirmed, removal through asbestos removal is a regulated activity that has to happen before the restumping crew attends. Testing also settles the question for any future work on the house. Keep the report, since renovations, deck builds and even a new pergola footing can put someone back under there.

Sequencing that correctly avoids a wasted mobilisation. A restumping crew arriving to find suspect sheeting under the house will stop, and the cost of that stoppage lands on the project rather than on anyone else. Raise the age of the house at the first conversation.

Subfloor moisture is the condition that caused the problem and it is rarely addressed. Poor ventilation, blocked or missing vents, ground levels built up above the subfloor and standing water after rain all keep timber damp, and improving that through underfloor ventilation installation protects the new work. It also addresses the rising damp that frequently accompanies a wet subfloor, which sits with rising damp assessment and repairs.

Bearers and joists frequently need attention once the stumps come out. Timber that has been sitting on a rotted stump has usually suffered at the contact point, and a scope that replaces stumps while leaving damaged bearers in place has fixed half the structure. Related timber work sits with carpentry and timber repairs.

Floorboards move during the work and some will need attention. Boards that have been sitting at an angle for decades will cup, gap or squeak once the floor returns toward level, and repair sits with floorboard repair and replacement. Polished boards in particular show every change, so a floor due for sanding is best done after the restumping.

Partial Restumping and When It Is False Economy

Replacing only the failed stumps is cheaper and it makes sense in specific situations. Where a defined area has failed, the rest of the stumps are demonstrably sound and the house is otherwise stable, doing that section is a legitimate answer. The conditions for it are narrower than most owners hope.

The problem is that stumps age together. Timber installed at the same time in the same conditions reaches the end of its life at roughly the same point, so a house where a dozen stumps have failed usually has another dozen close behind them. The inspection is what tells you which situation you are in. A report listing every stump and its condition removes the guesswork entirely, and it is the difference between a decision and a hope. Spend the few hundred dollars.

Mixing new and old also creates a differential. New stumps on proper footings sit rigid while the remaining old ones continue to settle, which concentrates movement at the boundary between them and can produce cracking exactly where the two meet. That line of cracking is a recognisable signature of a partial job.

Access costs are the practical argument against splitting the work. Getting a crew under a house, setting up, and working in a confined subfloor carries a fixed cost that is incurred twice if the job is done in two stages a few years apart. Set up costs do not halve when the scope does. Mobilisation, access, spoil removal and site establishment are much the same whether twenty stumps are replaced or seventy, which is why the per stump rate falls as the count rises.

A subfloor inspection is what settles the question honestly. Someone assessing every stump and reporting on the condition of each gives you a basis for deciding, and $300 to $900 for that report is trivial against the difference between a partial and a full job. It is the best value item on this entire page. Everything else you spend follows from what that report says, and going without it means every quote you receive is built on a different set of assumptions. Get it first. Everything downstream of that report is cheaper and more accurate for having it.

Where a house is being sold, partial work invites scrutiny. A purchaser's inspector who finds new stumps beside old ones will note it, and the question of why only some were done becomes part of the negotiation, so a building inspection before listing tells you what they will find. Better to know before the campaign starts than during it.

What to Look Out For

Start with the permit question, because it is the clearest signal available. A contractor who does not raise the building permit on a restumping job either does not know it applies or is hoping you will not ask, and both are reasons to keep looking. It is the single most useful question to ask a restumping contractor. The answer separates a builder who works within the system from one who does not.

Be cautious of a quote produced without anyone going under the house. Stump condition cannot be assessed from the street or from inside, so a figure quoted on the basis of a sloping floor and a house age is an estimate that will be revised once work starts. Insist that someone goes under before you accept a price. A builder unwilling to do that is quoting a range dressed up as a figure.

Watch for a scope that covers stumps and says nothing about bearers. Timber sitting on a rotted stump has usually suffered at the contact point, and discovering that mid job produces a variation mid job. Have bearers and joists addressed in the scope as a provisional item.

Check whether making good is included and to what extent. Plaster cracking during jacking is expected rather than exceptional, and a quote silent on plaster, cornices, doors and painting is describing perhaps seventy per cent of what you will actually spend. Compare quotes on the same inclusions or you are not comparing anything. Two builders can quote the identical structural work and differ by fifteen thousand dollars purely on what happens to the plaster afterwards. Have both price it the same way. It is a reasonable request and any established builder will accommodate it without complaint.

Finally, confirm registration, the written contract and domestic building insurance. On a job of this size all three generally apply, they are checkable, and a builder unwilling to provide the registration number is one to leave alone. Australian Consumer Law guarantees also apply on top of any contract, requiring work to be carried out with due care and skill, and guidance sits with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

How to Get Useful Quotes

Give the house type and era. Weatherboard, brick veneer with a timber floor, solid brick with a suspended floor, single or double storey, and roughly when it was built, since era tells a builder what stump material and construction to expect. Say if you know the house has been restumped before, since partial work in the past changes what a builder expects to find down there.

Measure your subfloor clearance and say what it is. The height from the ground to the underside of the bearers is the single most useful number you can provide, because it drives the labour more than anything else does. Measure it at the lowest point. The tightest corner is what governs how the crew works, not the average across the house.

Report the symptoms with numbers where you have them. How much fall across which rooms measured with a level, which doors bind, where the plaster is cracking, and whether any of it has changed over the last year. Photographs of the cracking help considerably.

Say what you found under the house if you looked. Leaning stumps, packing between bearers and stumps, timber that gives under a screwdriver, standing water, blocked vents or suspect sheeting should all be reported. Photograph whatever you can reach safely.

Have each quote state the number of stumps and the material, footing size and depth, who obtains the building permit, whether bearers and joists are included, what making good covers, and what registration and insurance apply. With those five answered you can weigh one builder against another properly. A total figure with no stump count behind it tells you very little.

Protecting the Work Afterwards

New stumps in ground that still moves will move too, so the maintenance that follows a restumping job is mostly about water. Keep stormwater away from the perimeter, check that downpipes discharge into drains rather than beside footings, and make sure the ground falls away from the house on every side. That single measure does more than anything else on this list.

Subfloor vents need to be open and they routinely are not. Vents blocked by garden beds, paving, stored material or built up soil stop the airflow that keeps timber dry, and clearing them costs nothing while protecting bearers, joists and floorboards. Walk the perimeter each autumn and check every vent is clear. Garden beds creep, paving gets added and mulch builds up, and none of it happens fast enough for anyone to notice. Ten minutes once a year covers it. Autumn is the natural time, since it puts the subfloor in good order before the wet months when moisture does the most damage.

Watch the trees near the house through dry summers. A large tree drawing moisture from clay on one side of a building produces exactly the differential movement that caused the original problem, and managing that through tree lopping and arborist services is a legitimate part of protecting the work. Get advice before removing anything mature, since sudden removal has its own consequences.

Take level readings once the job is finished and keep them. A record of the floor levels at completion gives you something to compare against in five years, which turns a subjective impression that the house is moving again into a measurable fact. Request that the builder records levels at handover. A simple set of measurements taken room by room on the final day becomes the baseline for every future conversation about whether the house is moving. It costs nothing and almost nobody asks for it.

Keep every document from the project together. The building permit, the inspection approvals, the contract, the insurance certificate and the final invoice all get requested during a sale, and reproducing them years later is considerably harder than filing them now. General upkeep sits with handyman services. Scan the documents, since paper gets lost across a decade. A purchaser asking whether the house has been reblocked is far easier to answer with a permit and a completion certificate than with a recollection. That paperwork adds value at sale. Buyers of period homes in Melbourne know to ask, and an owner who can produce the file answers the question in seconds.