Steel Lintel Repair Services SA 2026 - Complete Cost Breakdown

Steel Lintel Repair Costs in South Australia for 2026

Lintel corrosion is one of the few building defects where the damage you can see is actively misleading. The crack above the window looks like a crack, so it gets filled, and the filling conceals a structural member that keeps growing inside the wall. A year later the crack returns wider than before, and by then the brickwork around it has usually been displaced far enough to need rebuilding as well.

The pricing across South Australia in 2026 begins with an engineering assessment at $600 to $1,800, which is the correct first spend because this category has two completely different causes producing one crack pattern. Exposing and inspecting a single lintel runs $350 to $800, treating and recoating one in place $900 to $2,400, and replacing one $1,800 to $4,500 across a standard window or $3,500 to $9,000 across a garage or other wide opening.

What determines which of those you need is how far the steel has gone. Surface rust with the member still at a good deal full section can be treated and recoated. Steel that has lost section, or has expanded enough to displace the masonry above it, comes out. That judgement needs the lintel exposed, so the inspection and the repair are separate items rather than one quote.

South Australian housing has three conditions that bring lintels to this point earlier than they would elsewhere. Mild steel without galvanising was used widely in Adelaide housing well into the 1980s. Salt damp draws moisture and dissolved salt up through solid masonry walls, and salt in contact with steel accelerates corrosion sharply. And along the Gulf coast and both peninsulas, airborne salt does the same job from the outside. A lintel in a coastal double brick house with salt damp at the wall base is in about the worst environment available.

What a Lintel Does and Where Yours Are

A lintel spans an opening and carries whatever sits above it. Over a window or a door in a masonry wall that means the brickwork above the opening, and in a load-bearing wall it can also mean part of the roof or floor load.

In South Australian housing the arrangements fall into a few patterns worth recognising. Brick veneer houses built from the 1960s onward typically have a galvanised steel angle supporting the outer brick skin, with the inner timber or steel frame carrying the structural load separately. Double brick houses, common through the interwar and early post-war decades, have steel carrying both skins or a separate angle for each. Older solid stone houses commonly use a timber lintel internally with a brick arch or a stone head externally, and sometimes a steel flat bar inserted during a later renovation.

Where they are is easy enough to work out. Every external window, every external door, the garage opening and any internal opening in a masonry wall has one, and on a typical Adelaide house that is between eight and fifteen lintels. They are not visible, sitting behind the top course of brickwork or behind render, so the first indication is almost always cracking instead of anything you can inspect directly.

The practical consequence is that lintels fail in groups. They were installed alongside it, from the same material, in the same conditions, so where one has corroded enough to crack the brickwork the others on the same elevation are usually at a similar stage. An assessment should look at every opening on the affected elevation instead of only the one that has cracked, because that changes both the diagnosis and the staging of the work.

Symptoms of a Failing Lintel

The signature is specific enough to recognise from the footpath, and knowing it tells you whether to be concerned before anybody quotes.

The classic pattern is a horizontal crack at the top of the opening, roughly following the line of the lintel, with stepped cracking running up and diagonally outward from each end of the opening. The horizontal element comes from the steel expanding and lifting the course directly above it. The stepped diagonal cracks come from the displaced brickwork redistributing load outward and upward. Where the wall is rendered, the same geometry shows as a horizontal line with diagonal cracks at the corners of the opening.

Several other signs tend to appear alongside it once the process is underway. Mortar joints opening above the opening while remaining tight elsewhere. A visible bulge or step in the brick course above the window, easiest to see by sighting along the wall from one end, since looking at it square on hides a sag. Rust staining weeping from the mortar joint at the end of the lintel, which is the single most diagnostic sign available and effectively confirms it. Windows or doors that have become hard to operate because the opening has distorted.

What distinguishes it from other cracking is the location and the horizontal component. Cracking that runs diagonally from the corner of a window down toward the floor, or that is wider at the bottom than the top, points at footing movement instead. Cracking in the middle of an uninterrupted wall with no opening nearby is not a lintel. And fine hairline crazing across render is usually a finish problem rather than anything structural.

One practical measurement is worth taking yourself before you call anybody. Mark each end of the crack with a pencil and note the date alongside each mark, then take a width reading at one fixed point with a ruler. Repeat that reading at the same spot every month. A crack that is widening measurably over a few months is active and needs attention promptly, while one that has not moved in six months is historic and the urgency drops a good deal. That record is also useful to an engineer and costs nothing.

Rust Jacking and How Steel Fails

The mechanism has a name. It is called rust jacking, and understanding it is what makes sense of both the damage pattern and the repair options.

Steel corrodes to iron oxide, and iron oxide occupies several times the volume of the steel it came from. A lintel built tightly into masonry has nowhere to put that extra volume, so it exerts pressure on everything around it. The pressure is enough to lift brick courses, crack bricks themselves and displace render, and it builds slowly over years before anything visible happens. By the time the first crack appears the process has usually been running for a decade.

Where it starts is predictable and useful to know. Moisture reaches the steel at the ends of the lintel, where it bears into the brickwork, because that is where water travelling down the wall cavity or through the masonry collects and sits. So corrosion typically begins at the bearings and works inward. That is why the stepped cracking appears at the ends of the opening first and the horizontal crack above the middle comes later.

Three things accelerate it sharply and all three are common in South Australia. Unprotected mild steel, meaning no galvanising and either no paint or paint that has long since failed, which was standard in a great deal of Adelaide housing into the 1980s. Salt, which both increases the conductivity of moisture and directly attacks the steel, arriving either from salt damp rising through the wall or from airborne salt on the coast. And persistent moisture, from a failed flashing above the opening, a leaking gutter, a blocked weephole or rising damp in the wall below.

Of those, the water is the part worth acting on, because it is the only link in the chain a homeowner controls. A lintel kept dry lasts a very long time even unprotected, and a lintel kept wet fails regardless of its coating. Fixing the gutter, clearing the weepholes and dealing with salt damp at the wall base all extend lintel life much, and doing none of those guarantees the problem returns after any repair.

Lintel Failure Against Footing Movement

This distinction is the single most valuable thing on the page, because confusing the two leads to spending thousands on the wrong repair. Both produce cracking around window openings and the causes are unrelated.

Reactive clay underlies a great deal of the Adelaide plains and the foothills, and it swells when wet and shrinks when dry. That lifts and drops footings seasonally and over longer cycles, and the resulting movement cracks walls. The cracking concentrates at openings because an opening is the weakest part of a wall, so a footing problem and a lintel problem both announce themselves in the same places.

The differences are readable once you know what to look for. Footing movement produces cracking that is typically wider at one end, often running diagonally from a window corner down toward the floor or up toward the eaves in a continuous line, and it typically appears in several locations around the building at once including away from openings. It also changes with the seasons, closing in a wet winter and opening through a dry summer. Lintel failure produces a horizontal crack following the lintel line with stepped cracking from the ends, it is confined to the openings themselves, and it does not reverse seasonally because corroding steel does not shrink again.

Rust staining at the mortar joint near the end of an opening settles it almost conclusively in favour of the lintel. Doors and windows binding in winter and freeing in summer points strongly at footings. Cracking that is present on an internal wall as well as the external skin suggests footings, since a veneer lintel affects only the outer leaf.

Where both are happening at once, which is not unusual on an older Adelaide house, the sequence matters. Footing movement gets stabilised first, because repairing masonry above a moving footing means repairing it again. Our guides on foundation repairs and underpinning cover that side of the work in detail.

Getting that order wrong is one of the more expensive mistakes available on an older house. Rebuilding brickwork above an opening while the footing underneath is still moving seasonally produces a repair that cracks again within two or three summers, and the second repair costs what the first one did. Our subsidence repair guide sets out how the stabilisation stage is normally sequenced ahead of any masonry work.

Inspection and Engineering Assessment

An engineering assessment costs $600 to $1,800 and is the right first step on any cracking that might be structural. Exposing and inspecting a single lintel adds $350 to $800.

What the engineer does is establish which of the two causes you have, how far it has progressed, and what the repair needs to be. That involves measuring the cracking, looking at the pattern across the whole building instead of one opening, checking for the seasonal and location indicators that separate footings from lintels, and where necessary specifying that a lintel be exposed so the actual steel can be seen. The output is a written report with a recommended scope, and that report is what a builder quotes against.

Exposure means removing a small section of brickwork or render at the end of the lintel to see the steel directly. It is the only way to establish how much section is left, and it is why an honest operator will not give you a firm replacement price without it. A lintel that looks catastrophic from the cracking can turn out to have surface rust and plenty of section, and one with modest cracking can be badly wasted.

The value of the report extends past the diagnosis. It gives you a specification three builders can quote against on the same basis, which on a job between $2,000 and $9,000 is worth considerably more than it costs. It also documents the condition and the recommended work, which matters at sale and for any insurance or warranty discussion. A structural inspection or a building defect inspection covers broader assessments where more than the lintels are in question.

For anyone buying an older South Australian house, this is worth knowing in advance. Lintel corrosion is frequently noted in building inspection reports as cracking requiring further investigation, not the same as a diagnosis, and the cost difference between treatment and replacement across a whole elevation is substantial. Getting a structural engineer to look before exchange rather than after is the cheaper order of events.

Treatment and Recoating in Place

Where the steel has surface corrosion but retains substantially full section, treating it in place runs $900 to $2,400 per lintel and avoids the disruption of replacement entirely.

The process is methodical and the sequence is what makes it durable. The masonry immediately below and around the lintel is removed to expose it fully, the corrosion is mechanically cleaned back to sound steel, a rust converter or inhibitive primer is applied, the member is coated with a protective system suited to its exposure, and the brickwork is reinstated with a compressible joint so there is somewhere for any future movement to go. That last detail is what separates a proper job from a cosmetic one.

It is the right answer in a defined set of circumstances. Where the engineer confirms the steel has lost little of its thickness, where the cracking is modest and has not displaced brickwork significantly, and where the moisture source causing the corrosion has been identified and will be fixed. Without that last condition the treatment is a delaying tactic, because a cleaned and recoated lintel in a wall that keeps getting wet will corrode again.

What it will not do is reverse displacement. Brickwork that has already been lifted stays lifted, so where the courses above an opening have moved appreciably the repair includes rebuilding that brickwork regardless of whether the steel is treated or replaced. That reinstatement is a separate cost and it is where quotes routinely differ, so ask explicitly how much brickwork is coming out and going back.

Lintel Replacement Costs

Replacement is priced at $1,800 to $4,500 for a standard window, rising to between $3,500 and $9,000 on a garage or any other wide opening. The steel is a small fraction of that, with the rest being access, propping, masonry removal and reinstatement.

The sequence is the same regardless of scale. Temporary support is installed to carry the masonry above, the brickwork around the lintel is removed, the old steel is cut out, a new member of the specified size and protective treatment is installed with proper bearings each end, the brickwork is rebuilt, the temporary support comes out, and the finish is reinstated. On a standard window that is three or four days with curing time between stages.

Replacement becomes the right call where the engineer finds the steel has thinned materially, where the member has expanded enough to displace brickwork a good deal, where the opening is wide enough that the consequence of a failure is serious, or where the existing steel is undersized for what it carries. That last one appears more often than people expect in owner-built alterations and in openings that were widened at some point without the lintel being upgraded.

Do them in groups where the engineer confirms several are at a similar stage. The propping, the access, the tradespeople and the render reinstatement all have fixed components, so replacing three lintels on one elevation in a single visit costs substantially less per opening than three separate jobs over three years. That is also the answer to the staging question most owners ask, which is whether to do them all now.

There is one specification point worth insisting on in writing. The new member should be hot dip galvanised at minimum, and in coastal or salt damp conditions a heavier protective system or stainless steel is worth the difference. The cost gap at the time of installation is modest against doing the whole job again in twenty-five years. Related masonry work sits in our brick repair guide and bricklaying services guide.

Propping, Needling and Temporary Support

Nothing comes out of a wall until something else is holding the load. Temporary support runs $800 to $2,500 and it is a line item worth understanding instead of skipping past.

For a standard window in brick veneer the support is usually acrow props under a timber or steel waler spanning the opening, carrying the outer skin while the lintel is replaced. For wider openings and for double brick walls carrying more load, the method is needling, where steel needles are passed through the wall above the opening and supported on props each side so the masonry above is carried while everything below is removed. Needling is more involved and more expensive and it is also the correct method where the load warrants it.

This is the part of the job where cutting corners has consequences beyond money. Temporary works on a structural opening are high-risk construction work, the duties around them are real, and a wall that is inadequately supported while its lintel is removed can drop. Any quote that does not identify the propping method, or that prices a wide opening with no propping line at all, is a quote to set aside regardless of how attractive the total looks.

Expect to be asked to stay out of the room on the inside of the wall while the support is in place and the lintel is out. On a load-bearing internal wall or a wide external opening the engineer may also specify monitoring, meaning the propping is checked at intervals during the work. Both are signs of a job being done properly instead of inconveniences.

Galvanising, Coatings and Specification

What the replacement member is made of and how it is protected determines whether this repair lasts twenty years or sixty. The cost difference between the options is small relative to the labour of installing any of them.

Mill finish mild steel is what failed in the first place in most South Australian houses and has no place in a repair. Hot dip galvanising is the sensible minimum, giving a sacrificial zinc coating that protects the steel for decades in ordinary conditions and is the standard specification for this work. Duplex systems, meaning galvanising plus a paint coating over it, extend that a good deal and are worth specifying where exposure is severe. Stainless steel is the premium option and the right answer in the harshest coastal positions, at perhaps fifteen to thirty percent on the member cost, which on a total job is a modest increment.

Two details matter as much as the material. The bearing length at each end has to be adequate, because a member bearing on too little brickwork concentrates load and crushes the masonry beneath it, and that is a failure mode in its own right. And the lintel should be installed with a damp proof course or a separating membrane so masonry moisture is not sitting directly against the steel, which is the detail most often omitted in older construction and the reason so many of these members corroded.

For anyone close to the sea, which in practical terms means the suburbs fronting Gulf St Vincent and the peninsulas, the Fleurieu, the Yorke or Eyre Peninsulas, the specification conversation should start at duplex and consider stainless. Airborne salt in those locations attacks galvanising faster than inland exposure, and a member installed there to a minimum specification has a much shorter life than the same member in Salisbury.

Proprietary galvanised lintels are what most replacements use, and Galintel, owned by InfraBuild, is the range most commonly specified in Australian masonry work. Its published load and span tables are usually what an engineer sizes from, which is worth knowing because it means the member going into your wall is a catalogue item with documented capacity instead of something cut to suit on the day. Ask which product and which profile is being quoted.

Ask for the specification in writing, naming the section size, the material and the protective system. A quote that says a new lintel will be installed without stating what it is leaves the choice to whoever is buying the steel, and the cheapest option is what gets bought.

Brick Veneer, Double Brick and Bluestone

Wall construction changes the cost, the method and the consequence of a lintel failure, and South Australian housing contains all three main types in quantity.

Brick veneer is the cheapest to repair and the least serious when it fails. The outer brick skin is cladding, not a structural element, with the house frame carrying the load independently, so a corroded veneer lintel threatens the appearance and the weathertightness of the wall instead of the structure. Replacement is confined to the outer leaf, propping is straightforward, and the work is cheaper at $1,800 to $2,800 for a standard window.

Double brick is a different proposition and it is extremely common in Adelaide housing from the interwar period through to the 1970s. Both leaves carry load, the lintel arrangement carries more, more masonry has to come out and go back, and the propping is correspondingly heavier. Costs sit at $2,400 to $4,500 for the same window, and the consequence of a failure is structural rather than cosmetic. For background on the two wall types see our double brick construction and brick veneer construction cover the differences.

Bluestone and sandstone houses are the special case and the one requiring the most care. Pre-1920s Adelaide stock commonly has stone walls with brick dressings forming the window reveals and heads, sometimes with a brick arch over the opening and a timber lintel behind it, and sometimes with a steel flat bar inserted during a mid-century renovation. Working on those openings risks disturbing stonework that is difficult and expensive to make good, the mortar is lime instead of cement and behaves differently, and matching the stone is a specialist exercise. Expect the top of every range and an operator who has done it before.

One South Australian factor cuts across all three. Salt damp in a solid masonry wall brings dissolved salts into contact with any steel in that wall, and the combination corrodes far faster than moisture alone. On an older stone or double brick house with salt damp at the base, treating the damp is part of making the lintel repair durable instead of a separate project.

Brickwork and Render Reinstatement

The finish is the last stage and frequently the item that differs most between quotes. Brickwork reinstatement runs $600 to $1,800 and render and painting $600 to $2,800.

The brickwork comes back first, before any surface finish. However carefully a lintel is replaced, courses of brickwork come out and go back, and matching them is the difficulty. Bricks from the 1920s through the 1970s came in sizes and colours that are no longer made, so the match comes from salvage or from taking bricks from a concealed location such as inside a wardrobe recess or under an eave. Mortar matching matters as much as brick matching, since a modern grey cement mortar in a wall originally laid with a softer lime-rich mix reads as a repair from the street.

Render is easier to match in colour and harder to match in texture. A patch over the repaired area will be visible unless the render is taken to a natural break such as a corner, a control joint or the full elevation, and that is the single biggest cost variable in reinstatement. Quotes differ enormously here because one operator has priced patching the opening and another has priced rendering the whole wall, so the question to ask every quote is what area of render is included.

Texture coatings and acrylic finishes behave differently again. These are more forgiving of a patch because the coating is applied over the top and can be feathered, but they also have to be matched for product and texture, and an older acrylic finish may have faded beyond matching the original colour. Painting the full elevation afterwards is in many cases the only route to an invisible result. See our render repair and house rendering guides for how that side is priced on its own.

One detail is worth insisting on in the reinstated brickwork. There should be provision for movement above the repaired opening, whether a compressible joint or an appropriately detailed gap, so that any future expansion has somewhere to go instead of cracking the wall again. The absence of that provision is part of why the original failed, and rebuilding without it reproduces the original condition.

Garage and Wide Opening Lintels

Garage openings are the highest consequence lintels on a house and the most expensive to put right, at $5,500 to $9,000 or more. The reason comes down to span and the load that rides on it.

A single garage opening is typically 2.4 to 3 metres and a double is 4.8 metres or wider, so the member is carrying masonry across a distance where any loss of section matters far more than it would over a 900 millimetre window. The steel is deeper and heavier, the propping has to be engineered rather than improvised, and on a wide opening with living space above the load being carried can be substantial. Engineering input is not optional at this scale.

Garage lintels also corrode faster than window lintels in many South Australian houses for a reason worth knowing. The opening is at ground level, the brickwork around it is closest to the soil, and salt damp and splash from the driveway both put moisture into the masonry immediately around the bearings. On a house with a driveway falling toward the garage, water running against the wall makes it worse again.

Watch for the specific symptom at this opening, a horizontal crack above the garage door with the brick courses stepping up at each end and sometimes a visible sag in the middle. A sag is a late sign and warrants prompt attention, because the member has lost enough section to deflect under load. Garage doors that have begun binding in their tracks or will not close squarely are another indicator that the opening has distorted, which is sometimes misdiagnosed as a garage door problem when the opening around it has moved.

For anybody considering widening a garage opening or converting a single to a double, the lintel is the main cost and it needs engineering before anything else. Openings widened without upgrading the member are a recurring finding in building inspections, and a lintel sized for 2.4 metres spanning 4.8 metres is a genuine structural concern rather than a technicality.

Heritage Buildings and Listed Properties

A great deal of the South Australian housing most affected by this problem also carries heritage constraints, and those constraints change both the method and the price.

On a property inside a heritage area, or one with a local or state listing attached to it, work affecting the external appearance can be conditioned. For lintel repairs that matters because the repair involves removing and reinstating visible masonry, and the requirement is usually that the reinstatement match the original in brick, stone, mortar and finish. That raises the cost of the reinstatement, not the structural work, and it rules out shortcuts like rendering over a patch that cannot be matched.

Mortar is the technical issue that catches operators unfamiliar with this stock. Pre-1920s South Australian masonry was laid in lime mortar, which is softer than the brick or stone and designed to be the sacrificial element, accommodating movement and allowing the wall to breathe. Repointing or rebuilding with a modern cement mortar puts a hard material against a soft one, which concentrates stress into the brick or stone face and causes spalling. That is a slow failure and an expensive one.

The approvals question is worth settling before work is scheduled rather than during it. Confirm the listing status with your council and establish what consent, if any, the proposed reinstatement requires, and information on the state planning framework is published at sa.gov.au. A structural repair halted midway on a listed building is a worse position than one that took three weeks longer to start. Our repointing and tuckpointing guide covers the mortar side in detail.

Use an operator with experience on this stock. Lintel work on a bluestone villa in Norwood or a sandstone cottage in North Adelaide is a different exercise from the same work on a 1970s brick veneer in Modbury, and the difference shows in the finished wall, not in the structural outcome. Ask to see comparable work they have completed.

Adelaide Metropolitan Pricing Variations

Rates for this work vary across metropolitan Adelaide by more than most trades, because the cost is driven by wall construction and that follows the age of the suburb closely.

The pre-1920s inner suburbs are the dearest by a clear margin. Bluestone and sandstone villas and cottages through North Adelaide, Norwood, Unley, Prospect and the city fringe combine solid masonry, lime mortar, stone matching difficulties and frequent heritage constraints, and a lintel repair there can cost twice what the same opening costs in a newer suburb. Salt damp is also most prevalent in exactly this stock, which both accelerates the original corrosion and adds a second item to the repair.

The interwar and post-war double brick ring sits in the middle and contains the largest number of affected houses in the state. Suburbs through the inner north, the west, the inner south and the eastern foothills are dominated by double brick from the 1920s through the 1970s, much of it with unprotected mild steel over the openings, and those are the lintels now reaching the end of their service life in quantity. This is the mainstream job in this category.

Brick veneer in the northern and outer southern growth areas is the cheapest and least serious. The outer skin is cladding rather than structure, galvanised steel was increasingly standard from the 1970s onward, the brickwork is a current size that can be matched from stock, and propping is straightforward. The beachside suburbs between the Port and Marino sit apart on specification rather than on construction, since airborne salt there is the argument for duplex coating or stainless on anything being replaced.

Regional South Australian Pricing Patterns

Outside metropolitan Adelaide the repair itself costs much what it costs in town. What changes is getting a qualified opinion on it in the first place.

Structural engineers are concentrated in Adelaide, and a lintel assessment is one of the few building tasks that genuinely requires one before anybody picks up a tool. Mount Gambier, Whyalla, Port Lincoln, Port Pirie and Port Augusta have resident consulting engineers or regular visiting ones, and in those centres an assessment prices close to the metropolitan range. Elsewhere the engineer travels, and a report that costs $800 in Adelaide can reach $1,400 to $2,000 once travel time is in it. That single line item is the biggest single difference between a city and a country lintel job, and it is worth knowing before you ring around.

There is a practical way to reduce it. Engineers working in regional South Australia routinely batch their trips, so if you can wait a few weeks and the assessment is not urgent, ask to be fitted into an existing visit. Owners who do this often pay the metropolitan rate plus a modest share of travel instead of the whole of it. Neighbours with the same problem on the same street can split a single visit, which happens more often than people expect in towns built out at one time from the same stock.

The construction itself pushes regional costs up in a way that has nothing to do with distance. Country town housing and main street commercial buildings across the Mid North, the Clare Valley, the Barossa and the Flinders fringe are overwhelmingly local stone, and stone openings are the most expensive kind to repair. The material has to be taken down and reset instead of replaced from a pallet, the mortar is usually lime, and nothing about the sequence is quick. A sandstone cottage in Burra or Kapunda with a corroded lintel is a more demanding job than any brick veneer in Adelaide.

Salt damp overlays the whole picture through the agricultural districts. Groundwater salinity across the Mid North, the Murraylands and parts of the Yorke Peninsula is high, and in a solid stone wall with no damp course the salt arrives at the steel in solution and stays there. Lintels in that stock corrode faster and the repair commonly has to address the damp problem as well, a separate trade and a separate quote. Our salt damp treatment guide explains what that side involves and why the two jobs are usually sequenced rather than combined.

Rainfall and salt air then split the coast from the interior. The lower south east around Mount Gambier has the highest rainfall in the state and the shortest corrosion timelines to match. The Eyre and Yorke Peninsulas and the Fleurieu carry airborne salt, which argues for duplex coating or stainless on any replacement and not plain galvanised. The Riverland, the Mallee and the pastoral country are dry, so steel there lasts longest and the problems that do appear are usually traceable to a specific water source such as a failed gutter or a leaking service. Our building defect inspection guide is the right starting point if you are buying into any of this stock.

How to Get and Compare Lintel Repair Quotes

Lintel quotes are harder to compare than almost any other domestic repair, because two builders can look at the same crack and legitimately propose different scopes.

The reason is that nobody knows the condition of the steel until the masonry comes off it. A quote written before the lintel is exposed is an estimate against an assumption, and the honest ones say so. This is why the sequence that works is an engineering assessment first, then exposure and inspection, then a fixed price for the defined repair. Owners who try to obtain one all-in fixed price from a photograph either pay a large contingency built into the number or face a variation partway through.

Insist that every quote itemises the same things. Scope should name the specific openings, the proposed treatment for each, the propping method, who holds responsibility for the engineering, what reinstatement of brick, stone or render is included, and what happens if the exposed steel is worse than assumed. A quote that reads "repair lintel to front window, $4,200" is not a quote you can compare to anything.

Check the licence before you look at any of the numbers. Structural repair work above the prescribed threshold requires a licensed building work contractor in South Australia, and licences are searchable through Consumer and Business Services. Confirm the licensed entity, the business issuing the quote and the account you are asked to pay into are all the same party. Where the work exceeds the statutory threshold a written contract is required, and that contract is what you rely on if the job goes wrong.

Three quotes is the right number here, and it matters more than usual that all three price the same scope. Give each builder the engineer report, not your own account of what it said. A quote based on your description of what an engineer said is a quote based on a game of telephone, and the variation that follows belongs to the process rather than to anybody in it.

Be alert to the two failure modes at either end. The cheap quote that proposes filling and painting is not cheap, it is a different job that leaves the structural problem in place and buys perhaps two years. The expensive quote that proposes replacing every lintel in the house because one has failed is also wrong unless an engineer has inspected each of them, since lintels fail where the water goes, not uniformly. Our South Australian structural engineer guide and structural inspection guide cover how the assessment stage should run.

If a dispute does arise after the work, the pathway is defined. Raise it in writing with the contractor first, then through a conciliation conference convened by Consumer and Business Services, and then as a claim in the Magistrates Court of South Australia if it gets that far. A separate point worth knowing is that SACAT is not where your claim goes, since its building jurisdiction is disciplinary action against licensed contractors rather than a homeowner claim for money or rectification. Keeping the engineer report, the quotes, the contract and photographs of the exposed steel is what makes any of that straightforward. Our building defect inspection guide and brick repair guide cover the adjacent trades you may need.