Your rights · Victorian domestic building work

Warranties on restumping in Victoria, and what to do if your floor moves again.

Three different things cover a Shepparton restump and they are not interchangeable: the contractor’s written workmanship warranty, commonly 5 to 10 years; the statutory implied warranties under the Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995, which apply whether or not anyone writes them down and which run with the land; and the Australian Consumer Law guarantees on the stumps as goods and the work as a service. Behind all three sits a 10 year long stop on building actions under the Building Act 1993, counted from the certificate of final inspection. If your floor drops again the order is: measure and photograph, written defect notice, then Domestic Building Dispute Resolution Victoria, then VCAT.

Get a quote with the warranty in writing How to vet a restumper

Sticky bit: the coverage table

Who covers what, and for how long.

Restumping is domestic building work in Victoria, so several frameworks overlap. This is the order to work through when something goes wrong, and what each layer is actually for.

What it covers	Who is responsible	How long it lasts	What it is really for
Workmanship: levelling, plumb, fixing, backfill	Your contractor, under the written warranty in your contract	Commonly 5 to 10 years. Get the number in the document, not in conversation.	The first call for anything that moves, sags or works loose after handover.
Statutory implied warranties on domestic building work	The builder, under the Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995	Apply from the contract and are enforceable within the limitation period. They run with the land, so a later owner can generally rely on them.	Work carried out with reasonable care and skill, to the plans and specifications, with suitable and good quality materials, in accordance with the law.
Consumer guarantees on goods and services	The supplier and the contractor, under the Australian Consumer Law	No fixed expiry. What is reasonable depends on the nature of the goods and the work, and a house stump is expected to last decades.	Acceptable quality of the stumps themselves, and due care and skill in the service. Major failures attract stronger remedies.
The stump as a manufactured product	The stump manufacturer	Whatever the product warranty says. Concrete stumps installed correctly are a 60 to 100 year item in this soil.	Manufacturing faults: a stump that spalls, cracks or has misplaced reinforcement. Rare, but it happens.
Galvanised coating on steel stumps	The fabricator and galvaniser	Tied to the coating specification, certified to AS/NZS 4680	Early corrosion at the ground line. Ask for the coating certificate at handover and keep it.
Domestic building insurance, last resort cover	The insurer, taken out by the builder in your name	Generally 6 years from completion for structural defects, 2 years non structural. Required above a contract value set in the regulations.	Only where the builder has died, disappeared or become insolvent. It is not a general complaints channel.
Compliance of the building work itself	The registered building surveyor and the council	The certificate of final inspection is permanent evidence. Building notices and orders have no expiry.	Work done without a permit, or work that does not match the approved footing design.
Long stop on building actions	The Building Act 1993	10 years, measured from the certificate of final inspection	The outer limit. After that a building action generally cannot be brought at all, which is why the certificate date matters.
Your own home building insurance	Your insurer	Annual policy	Sudden identifiable events such as an escape of water, not gradual movement. See our insurance page.

If something goes wrong: the steps in order.

Step	What you do	Timeframe
1. Record it	Photograph the crack, the gap or the stump with a tape measure in the frame. Note the date. Take a floor level reading if you can, even with a long spirit level and a block.	Day one, before you contact anyone
2. Written defect notice to the builder	Email the description, photos, permit number and contract date. Ask for an inspection and a written rectification plan.	Ask for inspection within 14 days, plan within 28 days
3. Builder inspects and responds	Be there. Get their explanation in writing, not on the phone. If they agree to rectify, get dates.	14 to 28 days is reasonable
4. Independent report, if it is contested	Engage a building consultant or structural engineer for a written inspection report. Expect $600 to $1,800 in this region.	Before you escalate, and it usually pays for itself
5. Domestic Building Dispute Resolution Victoria	Lodge the dispute. The service is free and provides conciliation, and it is generally the required step before the tribunal.	Weeks to a few months
6. VCAT, building and property list	Apply to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal if conciliation does not resolve it. Fees apply and the process is months, not weeks.	Months, and always within the 10 year long stop
7. Regulator complaints, in parallel	The Victorian Building Authority for a registered practitioner’s conduct. The council municipal building surveyor for work done without a permit or not to the approved design.	Any time, and it does not replace steps 2 to 6

General information for Victorian homeowners, not legal advice. Consumer Affairs Victoria and the Victorian Building Authority publish the current thresholds and forms, and those are the numbers to rely on.

The framework

What actually applies to a restump in this state.

Restumping is building work under the Building Act 1993 and the Building Regulations, which is why a registered building surveyor has to issue a permit before the first stump comes out and why the footing design has to comply with AS 2870 for your soil class. That permit trail is not bureaucracy for its own sake: the certificate of final inspection at the end is the document that starts the 10 year clock and the document a purchaser’s conveyancer will ask for. Our permits page walks through how that runs in Greater Shepparton.

Sitting over the contract is the Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995. Above a contract value set in the Act, and a whole house restump is comfortably above it, the work must be under a written major domestic building contract, and the Act implies warranties into that contract that cannot be signed away: the work will be carried out with reasonable care and skill, in accordance with the plans and specifications, using materials that are good and suitable for the purpose, and in compliance with the law. The Act also caps the deposit a builder may take as a percentage of the contract price, with a lower percentage on larger contracts, so a demand for half the money before anyone arrives is not just poor practice, it is a breach. Consumer Affairs Victoria publishes the current percentages and thresholds.

Alongside that, the Australian Consumer Law gives you guarantees that apply to every transaction: services performed with due care and skill and fit for the stated purpose, and goods of acceptable quality. There is no fixed expiry on those guarantees. What counts as a reasonable life depends on the product, and nobody argues that a house stump is a two year item. Where a failure is major, the remedies are stronger and you are not limited to accepting another repair attempt.

Finally, whoever carries out domestic building work above the value set in the regulations must be registered with the Victorian Building Authority for that class of work, and must take out domestic building insurance in your name before accepting a deposit. That insurance is last resort cover: it responds if the builder has died, disappeared or become insolvent, not simply because they have stopped returning calls. The dollar threshold that triggers it has changed over the years, so rather than quote a figure that may be out of date, ask for the certificate of insurance and check the current threshold with the authority. On a job of restumping size you should be receiving that certificate as a matter of course.

Ask for the warranty terms before you sign, not after.

Our quotes state the workmanship warranty period, the permit and inspections included, and what is excluded, on the same page as the price.

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Your file

The nine documents to keep, and where they matter.

Almost every restumping dispute that goes badly for the homeowner goes badly because the paperwork is thin. Scan all of this the week the job finishes and keep it in one folder with the house papers. It costs you an hour and it is the difference between a claim and an argument.

The signed contract including the scope, the price, the payment stages and the warranty clause.
The itemised quote it was based on, which is what a tribunal reads to work out what was promised.
The building permit and the permit number, plus the surveyor’s details.
The engineer’s footing computations showing the site classification, pad size and founding depth.
The certificate of final inspection. This is the one that starts the 10 year clock.
Before and after floor level readings from the laser, ideally as a marked up sketch of the house.
Dated photographs of the subfloor before, the open holes, and the finished stumps.
The insurance certificates: domestic building insurance in your name and the contractor’s public liability currency.
Product documentation for the stumps, including the galvanising certificate on a steel job.

If you are buying a house in Kialla, Tatura or anywhere else around the valley that has been restumped, ask the vendor for exactly this list. A restump with no permit and no certificate is not a selling point, it is a liability that transfers with the title, as our page on selling explains.

Defect or fair wear

Telling the difference honestly.

This is where most arguments start, so it is worth being straight about it. Greater Shepparton sits on cracking clay classified Class M to Class H under AS 2870. That ground takes up water through a wet winter and shrinks through a dry summer, and a house on it will always breathe a little with the seasons. A few millimetres of rise and fall, a door that is slightly tighter in August than in February, a hairline crack that opens and closes at the same cornice each year: that is the soil doing what the standard expects it to do, and no engineered footing removes it entirely.

A defect looks different. It is one directional and it keeps going. A floor that has dropped 15mm or more since handover and is still dropping. A new stump visibly out of plumb. A concrete stump that has cracked or spalled. An adjustable steel head that has seized or wound itself down under load. Backfill that has slumped away leaving a stump standing proud in a hole. A bearer that was left sitting on a stack of packers rather than fixed to a stump cut to height. Those are workmanship or product issues and they belong in a defect notice.

Then there is the middle ground that is neither. Cornice cracks and door adjustments in the weeks after a re-level are expected: you have just moved a 70 year old house back to where it was built and the plaster set in the moved position. A good contractor says so before the work, allows for easing the doors, and tells you a painter may be wanted. If nobody mentioned it before the job, that is a scope failure rather than a structural one, which is exactly the kind of dispute that a written scope prevents.

The tie breaker is measurement. Take a level reading at handover and another one twelve months later, at the same points, marked on a sketch. Two readings a year apart settle most of these conversations in five minutes, and a builder who is confident in the work will happily give you the first one. What our warning signs page covers for diagnosing a failing floor works just as well for monitoring a new one.

Writing the notice

What a defect notice should actually say.

Keep it short, factual and dated, and send it by email so there is a timestamp. Include the property address, the contract date, the building permit number, the date you first noticed the problem, and a plain description of what is happening in the language you would use at the kitchen table. Attach the photographs with a tape measure in the frame and any level readings. Then state what you want, which is rectification under the warranty, and put two dates on it: an inspection within 14 days and a written rectification plan within 28 days.

Three things not to do. Do not lead with a threat of VCAT, because it invites a defensive response and conciliation works better from a calm starting point. Do not offer to split the cost before anyone has inspected it. And do not have the whole conversation on the phone: if it is not in writing, it did not happen, and a conciliator can only read what you can show them. Keep every reply, including the ones that annoy you.

The honest part. Most restumping disputes in this district are not caused by bad workmanship. They are caused by a vague scope, where the quote said restumping and the homeowner reasonably assumed that included bringing every floor in the house to dead level, replacing the soft bearer under the bathroom and making good the cornices. A clear written scope, with the stump count, the level tolerance, the re-level extent, what happens to the plaster and what is excluded, prevents almost all of it. That is why we itemise the scope and write the exclusions on the quote, even when it makes the number look bigger than the one next to it. For the same reason: our workmanship warranty does not cover plaster cracking after a re-level, movement caused by a tree planted after we left, damage from a leaking pipe or drain that was not reported, subfloor timber we were not asked to replace, or any stump we did not install. Those exclusions are on the quote so they cannot be a surprise later.

Warranty questions homeowners ask

What warranty should a Shepparton restumping job come with?

Three layers, and you should be able to see all of them. A written workmanship warranty from the contractor, commonly 5 to 10 years on the levelling and the installation. The statutory implied warranties under the Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995, which apply to domestic building work in Victoria whether or not anyone writes them into the contract. And the consumer guarantees in the Australian Consumer Law covering both the stumps as goods and the work as a service. Behind all three sits a 10 year long stop on building actions under the Building Act 1993, measured from the certificate of final inspection.

Do restumping warranties transfer to the next owner?

The statutory warranties under the Domestic Building Contracts Act run with the land in Victoria, so a later owner can generally enforce them against the original builder within the limitation period. A contractor written warranty is a contract term, so whether it transfers depends on what the document says: some are expressly transferable, some are not. If you are buying a house that was restumped recently, ask for the permit, the certificate of final inspection and the warranty document, and read whether the warranty names the owner or the property.

Is seasonal floor movement a defect or fair wear?

On Class M to Class H reactive clay around Shepparton, a few millimetres of seasonal rise and fall between a wet winter and a dry summer is normal behaviour of the ground, not a defect, and no engineer designs it out completely. What is not normal is progressive one way movement: a floor that drops 15mm or more and keeps going, a stump out of plumb, a cracked or spalled new stump, or an adjustable head that has seized. Photograph and measure it, because the difference between the two is shown by readings over time rather than by opinion.

What should a defect notice to a builder actually say?

Keep it factual and dated. Property address, contract date, building permit number, the date you first noticed the problem, a plain description of what is happening, photographs with a tape measure in the frame, and any level readings you have. Then state what you want, which is rectification, ask for an inspection within 14 days and a written rectification plan within 28 days, and send it by email so it is timestamped. Do not threaten, do not offer to split the cost, and keep every reply.

What happens if the builder will not fix it?

The next step in Victoria is Domestic Building Dispute Resolution Victoria, which provides free conciliation for domestic building disputes and is generally the required step before you can take a matter to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. Conciliation typically runs over weeks to a few months and can end in a dispute resolution order. If it does not resolve, VCAT hears the matter in its building and property list. Separately, you can complain to the Victorian Building Authority about a registered practitioner and to the council about work done without a permit.

Does domestic building insurance cover a failed restump?

Only as a last resort. Victorian domestic building insurance responds when the builder has died, disappeared or become insolvent, not simply when the builder refuses to come back. Cover for structural defects generally runs 6 years from completion and non structural 2 years. The requirement to take out that insurance applies above a contract value set in the regulations, and that figure has changed over the years, so ask your builder for the certificate of insurance in your name and check the current threshold rather than assuming.

Get a price

Get a quote with the warranty and the exclusions written on it

Send the form and we will book a free subfloor inspection, then quote with the scope, the warranty period and the exclusions on the same page, usually within a few days.

A clear scope prevents the argument.

Stump count, footing depth, re-level extent, what happens to the plaster, warranty period and exclusions. All on the quote, before you sign anything.

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