What restumping costs in Victoria

Restumping is priced per job, not per house. Two weatherboard cottages on the same street can land a long way apart because one has good side access and 900mm of crawl space and the other has a 400mm void reached through one manhole. That is why we inspect first and then put a fixed figure in writing.

We are deliberately not publishing a per-stump rate on this page. A rate quoted before anyone has been under the house is a number that changes once the crew arrives, and the version you get at that point is always the higher one. What we can do is explain exactly what the price is made of, so the quote you receive is readable rather than a single line.

The eight things that move the price

In rough order of how much they matter on a typical Victorian home:

1. How many stumps the house has. The single biggest factor. Stump count follows the floor area and the span of the bearers, so a large home with wide rooms can carry more stumps than its footprint suggests.
2. How many actually need replacing. A partial restump of one failed wall is a fraction of a full restump. Whether a partial is the right call is a structural judgement, not a budget decision.
3. Stump material. Concrete suits most homes. Galvanised steel costs more per stump but is the only workable answer in a shallow crawl space or where access will not take a concrete stump in one piece.
4. Access underneath. A metre of clearance and a wide side gate is a different job to a 400mm crawl space reached through a single manhole. Access drives labour hours more than any other site factor.
5. Whether the floors need relevelling. Replacing stumps and bringing a floor back to a surveyed level are related but separate pieces of work. A floor that has dropped 60mm over decades needs a staged lift.
6. Ground and footing conditions. Reactive clay, rock, fill, or a high water table all change how the footings have to be dug and compacted. This is also what decides whether the job is a restump or an underpin.
7. Permits and engineering. Restumping needs a building permit in Victoria and underpinning also needs engineering design. Those are real costs and they belong in the quote rather than appearing later.
8. What else has failed down there. Rotted bearers, failed joists, no subfloor ventilation or a downpipe discharging under the house are commonly found during the inspection and change the scope.

What should be inside a restumping quote

A quote you can actually compare spells out the scope rather than naming a total. Look for the stump count and material, whether the price is for a partial or a full restump, whether relevelling is included, who pulls the building permit and whether its cost is in or out, how the spoil from the footing excavations is removed, how services under the house are dealt with, what happens to the plaster and cornices affected by the lift, and the guarantee in writing with a term on it.

If two quotes are thousands apart, nine times out of ten they are not quoting the same job. The cheaper one is usually a partial where the other is a full restump, or it has the permit sitting outside the price, or it is not relevelling the floors.

Why the cheapest quote is often the expensive one

Restumping is permit work in Victoria and only a registered builder can take out that permit. An operator who skips it can quote lower because they are leaving out real cost. The problem lands on the owner: unpermitted structural work on a title is a problem at sale time, and it is the current owner who has to resolve it.

The other version of the same trap is footings that are dug shallow or not properly compacted. The house comes back to level and looks finished. Two or three years later the new stumps settle and the floor moves again, and nobody is offering a ten year guarantee on that work.

Is restumping worth it

On a house that needs it, yes, and not mainly for comfort. Failed footings keep moving, and everything attached to the floor moves with them: plaster, cornices, tiling, joinery, external cladding. The structural repair is a fixed cost that stops getting bigger the day it is done, while the cosmetic damage keeps compounding until it is.

It also shows up at sale. A buyer's inspector will find sloping floors and rotted stumps, and the discount that gets negotiated off the price is rarely kinder than the cost of having done the work with a permit and a guarantee behind it.

What underpinning costs instead

Underpinning is a different and more involved job: each pier is excavated down to stable ground, reinforced and poured in sequence, and engineering design is required on top of the building permit. It costs more per point of support than restumping and takes longer on site. It is also not an alternative you choose. It is what the ground conditions dictate, and the inspection is what tells us which one your house is.