How many stumps does your Shepparton house need? Count them before you price them.
A typical Shepparton weatherboard carries one stump every 1.2 to 1.8 metres along each bearer, which is roughly one stump for every 2.2 to 3.0 square metres of stumped floor. A 120 square metre three bedroom home is therefore about 40 to 55 stumps, and 40 to 70 covers most houses in this district. Each pad footing takes 0.04 to 0.06 cubic metres of concrete and leaves behind about 0.08 cubic metres of loose clay, so a 56 stump job uses roughly 3 cubic metres of concrete and produces 4 to 5 cubic metres of spoil. Work out the quantity first, then price it.
Size your restump, then see the range.
Set the stump count first. If you have not been under the house yet, divide the stumped floor area in square metres by 2.6 to get a starting number, then read the measuring section below to sharpen it. The dollar range is a guide only: the exact figure comes from the free subfloor inspection, and the full cost breakdown lives on our cost guide and price list.
What the quantity turns into
| Per stump | Quantity | On a 56 stump house |
|---|---|---|
| Concrete in the pad footing | About 0.04 to 0.06 cubic metres, once the engineer has sized the pad | 2.5 to 3.5 cubic metres, plus 10 per cent wastage |
| Excavated clay, loose after bulking | About 0.08 cubic metres | 4 to 5 cubic metres, roughly 6 to 8 tonnes wet |
| Adjustable props in use at once | One prop per two stumps being worked | Around 20 to 30 props on site |
| Time on site | Roughly 1 working day per 7 to 9 stumps | 6 to 10 working days |
How to count stumps with a tape and a phone.
You do not need to crawl the whole subfloor. Twenty minutes with a torch, a tape and a phone camera gets you within a handful of stumps, which is close enough to sanity check any quote you are given.
- Measure the stumped footprint. Walk the outside with a tape and get the length and width of the timber framed part of the house. Leave out anything on a concrete slab, the garage and any brick section on a strip footing, because none of those sit on stumps. Multiply for the area in square metres.
- Work out which way the bearers run. From a vent or the manhole, look at the timber. The joists run under and across the floorboards, and the bearers run at right angles underneath the joists, carried by the stumps. Bearer lines are typically 1.8 to 2.7 metres apart.
- Count one bearer line, then count the lines. Photograph along a single bearer and count the stumps in the photo. Spacing is normally 1.2 to 1.8 metres. Multiply by the number of bearer lines you can see or reasonably infer from the width of the house.
- Add the perimeter row. There is a stump roughly every 1.2 to 1.5 metres under the external wall plate, all the way around. On a 12 metre by 9 metre house that perimeter alone is about 28 to 34 stumps.
- Add the extras. Two to four additional stumps under a bathroom, because a full bath and tiled floor is heavy. Two under an old brick hearth or chimney base. A row under each load bearing internal wall. One or two per verandah, porch or sleepout edge.
- Add the allowance. Add 10 per cent for stumps you cannot see: behind ducting, buried in fill, hidden by an old subfloor wall or added when someone extended the house in the 1970s. Round up, never down.
If you cannot get under the house at all, which is common where the crawl space is under 500mm or the vents have been paved over, use the area rule alone: stumped floor area divided by 2.6. On 124 square metres that gives 48, and the real number on a house that size is usually in the low 50s once the internals are counted. Take a video on your phone through the vent and send it with your enquiry, and we can usually narrow it before we visit.
We count every stump, not a sample.
The free subfloor inspection includes a photographed count, a condition note against each row and a laser level read across the whole floor.
The allowances that stop a count being wrong.
Every trade has its wastage figure. In restumping the equivalents are the unseen stumps, the concrete allowance and the founding depth, and each of them is a place where an optimistic number becomes a variation on your invoice.
- Ten per cent unseen. Ducting, old subfloor walls, fill dumped under a 1970s extension and stumps sitting inside a paved-in verandah all hide from a torch. Every count done from a vent runs light.
- Ten per cent concrete wastage. Pads take 0.04 to 0.06 cubic metres each before spillage and over-excavation. On 56 stumps order for about 3.5 cubic metres rather than 3.
- Bulking on the spoil. Clay expands roughly a third once it is dug, so the hole volume is not the pile volume. A 56 stump job leaves 4 to 5 cubic metres of loose material on your lawn if it is not carted away, which is why spoil removal belongs on the quote.
- Founding depth is not negotiable. Stump length is measured from the underside of the bearer to the ground, plus the depth the engineer sets for your soil class. On Class M to Class H clay that depth is the entire reason the floor stays level, so it is the last place to shave a number.
- Round up to standard lengths. Precast stumps come in standard sizes and a house that takes standard lengths costs less than one where every stump is bespoke.
- Add two to four for the wet areas. Bathrooms, laundries and kitchens carry more weight and, in this district, are usually where the rot started.
Counting the perimeter and forgetting the middle.
The single most costly sizing error we see around Shepparton is a homeowner, or a quoting contractor in a hurry, counting the stumps visible from a wall vent and calling that the number. The perimeter row is the easiest to see and typically only half to two thirds of the total. A count of 30 becomes an actual 52 once the internal bearer lines, the bathroom cluster and the hearth base are added, and that is the difference between a $9,000 assumption and a $15,000 job.
It matters more than the arithmetic, because an undercounted quote does not stay wrong quietly. It turns into a variation halfway through the week, at a point where the floor is propped, you have no leverage and the crew is already on site. Any quote you accept should state the stump count it is priced on and say in writing what happens if the actual count differs. Ours does, and if you are comparing quotes, that single line tells you a great deal about who has actually been under the house. There is more on reading a quote in how to choose a restumper.
The second most expensive mistake runs the other way: replacing all 56 stumps when only 12 have failed. Both errors come from the same place, which is pricing before counting.
A Mooroopna weatherboard, counted and costed.
A 1958 weatherboard in Mooroopna, 11.8 metres by 9.6 metres, which is 113 square metres of stumped floor, plus a 3.2 by 3.6 metre rear sleepout on its own stumps for another 11.5 square metres. Total stumped area 124.5 square metres. The area rule gives 124.5 divided by 2.6, which is 48 stumps as a starting estimate.
Under the house the actual count came out at 52: 30 around the perimeter at about 1.4 metre centres, two internal bearer lines of 9 and 8 stumps under the hallway and the load bearing kitchen wall, 3 clustered under the bathroom, and 2 under the old brick hearth. Adding the 10 per cent unseen allowance gave 57, and the final count once the ducting was moved was 56. Of those, 41 were perished red gum and 15 were sound, but all 56 were the same age and in the same clay, so replacing the lot was the right call rather than staging it.
The itemised job, in 2026 money: 56 concrete stumps at $85 supplied and installed, $4,760. Full laser re-level of the whole floor, $5,600. Engineer’s computations, $850. Building permit through a private registered surveyor, $980. Mobilisation, propping and spoil removal, $1,900. Eight lineal metres of soft bearer under the bathroom at $130 a metre, $1,040. Reopening six paved-over wall vents, $450. Total $15,580, which sits mid range for a full restump of an average Goulburn Valley home. The 3.1 cubic metres of concrete and the 4.5 cubic metres of spoil that came out of the ground are both inside the figures at the top of this page.
When the answer is a much smaller number. On the same street, a 1972 weatherboard had 12 stumps perished under the laundry and bathroom wall where a downpipe had been discharging against the base boards for years. The other 44 stumps were dry hardwood with sound bases and 20 years of life left. That job was 12 stumps, a local re-level, the downpipe redirected and two vents reopened: $6,900, not $16,000. We counted, we said so, and we quoted it that way. If your count comes back small and the rest of the subfloor is dry, do not let anybody talk you into the whole house, and if what is actually moving is a brick wall on a strip footing rather than a stumped timber floor, the job is underpinning and the quantity you need is piers, not stumps.
Sizing questions we get asked
How many stumps does an average Shepparton house have?
How do I count the stumps under my own house?
How much concrete does a restump use?
Do I have to replace every stump?
What is the most common mistake when sizing a restump?
How long should the new stumps be?
Related reading: choosing concrete or steel, what the warranty covers, stump replacement and the signs you need restumping.
Get the real stump count for your house
Send the form and we will book a free subfloor inspection, then send you the photographed stump count, the laser level read and a fixed price, usually within a few days.
Count first, price second.
A quote that names the stump count, the footing depth and the re-level extent is a quote you can hold someone to. That is how we write ours.