Restumping a Shepparton house, stage by stage: what happens on each day.
A full restump of a 56 stump weatherboard is 6 to 10 working days on site, inside an elapsed 5 to 9 weeks, because the engineering and the building permit take 1 to 3 weeks before anyone digs. You can keep living in the house the whole time. The loud days are the two or three excavation days and the jacking day. The crew needs your driveway, an outdoor power point and a garden tap, and roughly 4 to 5 cubic metres of clay spoil has to leave your property at the end.
Every stage of a Shepparton restump, with real durations.
Based on a 56 stump three bedroom weatherboard on Class M clay with reasonable side access. A partial restump of 10 to 18 stumps compresses stages 5 to 9 into 3 to 4 days.
| Stage | How long | What happens | What you need to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Free subfloor inspection | 1 to 2 hours | We crawl the subfloor, check and photograph every stump, and read the floor levels with a laser across the whole house. | Open the crawl space, secure the dog, point out any area that worries you. |
| 2. Fixed written quote | 2 to 5 business days | Stump count and material, footing approach, re-level scope, permit and engineering all itemised as separate lines. | Read the four numbers, ask what is excluded, then sign the contract. |
| 3. Engineering and building permit | 1 to 3 weeks | The engineer designs the footings for your soil class and a registered building surveyor issues the permit. No digging is lawful before this. | Sign the permit application as owner and pay the deposit, which is capped by Victorian law. |
| 4. Site set-up | Half a day, from 7am | Access opened up, lattice and vent covers off, spoil area set, props and plant unloaded, services located. | Cars off the driveway, side gate unlocked, prep finished the night before. |
| 5. Excavation and propping | 2 to 3 days | The floor is propped in stages onto adjustable props on spreader plates, old stumps come out and holes are dug to the engineered depth. The loudest, dustiest part of the job. | Stay clear of the subfloor. Keep pets and children inside. Plan calls for early or late. |
| 6. Footing inspection | 1 to 2 hours, booked | The building surveyor attends with the holes still open and checks depth and bearing against the engineer’s design. Nothing is poured until it passes. | Nothing, but be contactable. This is the inspection that catches shallow footings. |
| 7. Pads poured, stumps set | 1 to 2 days, then 2 to 5 days curing | Pad footings poured, stumps set plumb and to height, concrete left to gain strength before it takes load. | Keep the area clear. Expect a quiet couple of days on site while it cures. |
| 8. Jacking and re-levelling | 1 to 2 days | The house is brought back to level in controlled lifts, typically 5 to 10mm at a time where plaster is at risk, with the laser running the whole time. | Expect creaks and the odd cornice crack. Doors will need adjusting afterwards. |
| 9. Fix off and backfill | 1 day | Bearers fixed to stumps, ant caps fitted, any soft bearer or joist replaced, holes backfilled and compacted. | Decide now on any extra subfloor work, while the floor is still open. |
| 10. Clean up and handover | Half a day | Spoil and old stumps removed, vents reopened, lattice and decking reinstated, crawl space swept, final laser read walked through with you. | Walk the site. Check the vents, the props are gone and nothing is left under the house. |
| 11. Final inspection and certificate | 1 to 2 weeks after | The surveyor carries out the final inspection and issues the certificate of final inspection. | File the certificate, the permit and the engineering with your house papers. You will want them at sale. |
| 12. Settling and make-good | 2 to 6 weeks after | The frame settles onto the new stumps. Doors are eased, sticking windows adjusted, hairline cornice cracks filled. | Keep a list as things show up and raise them in one go rather than one at a time. |
Durations are working days on a typical Goulburn Valley job in 2026. Rain, asbestos and unexpected rot are the three things that move them, and all three are covered further down.
Your printable pre-start checklist.
Tick these off before day one. Your ticks are saved in this browser, so you can come back to it, and the print button gives you a clean copy for the fridge.
Two weeks before the start date
Outside and access
Inside the house
While the work is running
Stop and ask questions if you see these
Want your own dates and day count?
After the free subfloor inspection we give you the stump count, the working days and the likely permit turnaround in writing, before you commit to anything.
Access, parking, power and water.
A restumping crew on a Shepparton weatherboard is usually two or three utes and a tandem trailer, so 15 to 20 metres of kerb plus the driveway covers it. The trailer carries the props, the mixer and the stumps, and it needs to sit as close to the working side of the house as possible, because every stump and every barrow of concrete is walked in by hand. Side access of about 800mm is the practical minimum for a wheelbarrow. Where a house is tight on both sides, expect the access surcharge on the quote, which runs 10 to 25 per cent because everything takes longer.
For most jobs the pads are mixed on site rather than delivered, so a truck does not need to reach the house. What the crew does need is an outdoor power point for a 15 amp lead running the mixer, breaker and subfloor lighting, and a garden tap for mixing and washing down. If your outdoor GPO is dead or your tap leaks, sort that beforehand: a generator adds noise and fuel to the day. Leave the driveway clear from 7am, because if the trailer cannot get in the first hour of the day goes on shuffling vehicles.
Noise, dust, smell, pets, kids and working from home.
Noise.
The excavation days are the loud ones. A jackhammer breaking out an old stump base is working directly under your floorboards, and the sound carries through the boards rather than around them, so it is louder inside than out. Rattle guns and the mixer run through the middle of the job. Work sits inside the normal construction hours guidance for Victoria, Monday to Friday 7am to 6pm and Saturday 7am to 1pm, with nothing on Sundays or public holidays. In a heatwave the crew may ask to start at 6:30am and finish early, which is only reasonable with your agreement and a word to the neighbours.
Dust and smell.
Fine Goulburn Valley clay dust rises through the gaps between floorboards, and no amount of care stops all of it. Clear the tops of wardrobes, close doors to rooms not being worked over, and expect a wipe down at the end. The smell is damp earth for the first day or two, and if the subfloor has been wet, a musty note that actually improves once the vents are reopened and the ground dries out.
Pets and children.
A cat will be under the house within ten minutes of the first vent coming off, and the crew cannot see into every corner of a crawl space before they backfill. Keep cats inside for the duration. Dogs need to be behind a closed door or off site on the dig days, both for the noise and because the side gate will be open all day. Open footing holes and propped bearers are not a place for children at any hour, including after the crew has gone home.
Working from home.
Perfectly possible on the quiet stages: the curing days, the fix-off day and the clean-up. Difficult on the two or three excavation days and the jacking day. If you cannot move those meetings, the practical answer is to work from the far end of the house and schedule calls before 7:30am or after 4pm. Plenty of our customers simply take those days at the office or at a relative’s place in Mooroopna or Shepparton North.
Four things that move the finish date.
- Rain. Open holes in reactive clay fill with water and the sides slump in. The crew then has to pump, clean out and sometimes redig, so one wet day usually costs a day of program and a wet week can add 2 to 5 days. This is the main reason February to April is the preferred window here, as our seasonal guide explains.
- Rot you could not see from the manhole. Soft bearers and joists only reveal themselves once the floor is propped and the light is in there. Replacement is $80 to $180 a lineal metre and adds 1 to 2 days. It is far cheaper now than after the floor is back down, which is why we quote it as a provisional item rather than pretending it will not happen.
- Asbestos. Plenty of pre-1990 homes around Shepparton have asbestos cement sheet somewhere in the subfloor: vent covers, base sheeting, an old bath surround or a buried path. If it turns up, work in that area stops and a licensed removalist deals with it, which is typically $500 to $2,500 for small quantities and a day of program. Nobody should be breaking that material out with a hammer.
- Surprises in the ground. An old septic tank, a filled-in well, a private water line running exactly along a stump row, or rubble fill where the engineer expected clay. Any of those means a call to the engineer and sometimes a redesign of that footing, which is a day or two rather than a week, but it is a day nobody planned for.
What a clean site looks like, and where the waste goes.
At handover there should be no props left under the house, no old stumps anywhere on the property, backfill compacted and level with the surrounding ground, every wall vent open and clear, lattice and decking back on, and the crawl space swept of offcuts, wire and concrete waste. Walk it with the crew before they leave and ask for the laser level read across the house, so you have a documented before and after rather than an opinion.
A 56 stump job produces roughly 4 to 5 cubic metres of loose clay spoil once you allow for bulking. Some of that goes back into the holes, the rest either gets spread on site if you want it for fill, or is carted to a transfer station. Old concrete stumps go to a concrete recycler and get crushed for road base. Rotted hardwood and any treated timber goes to landfill: treated timber must never be burnt or mulched, because of what the preservative releases. Asbestos, if any was found, goes to a licensed disposal site and you should be given the disposal paperwork with your other documents.
One honest caution. Bringing a floor back to level after 40 years out of level moves the plaster above it. Hairline cracks at cornices and above door frames are normal, expected and not a defect: the house is going back to where it was built, and the plasterwork set in the moved position. A good crew lifts slowly to keep that to a minimum and tells you up front that a painter may be needed. Anyone who promises no cracking at all on a 25mm lift is telling you what you want to hear. The same is true of the doors: expect a handful to need easing a few weeks after the floor settles onto the new stumps. If your house is brick veneer on strip footings rather than timber on stumps, none of this timeline applies and what you are looking at is underpinning, which is a different job with a different program.
Questions about the working week
How many days does a restump take in Shepparton?
Can I live in the house while it is being restumped?
How much noise and dust does restumping make?
What has to be moved before the crew arrives?
What happens if it rains during the restump?
What should the site look like when the crew finishes?
Related reading: permits and inspections, the budget tiers, how restumping works and what to do if a stump has already collapsed.
Get your restumping dates and day count in writing
Send the form and we will book the free subfloor inspection, then come back with the stump count, the working days on site and the likely permit turnaround, usually within a few days.
Know exactly what your week looks like.
Free subfloor inspection, fixed price, permit and inspections handled, and a written program before the first stump comes out.