When a floor starts to slope or a door begins to stick, most Werribee homeowners assume the whole house needs restumping. Sometimes it does. But a lot of the time the trouble is concentrated in one part of the house, and replacing only the failed stumps is a perfectly sound fix.
The catch is that a partial restump done on the wrong house is money spent twice. Here is how to tell the difference.
What a partial restump is
A partial restump replaces only the stumps that have failed, usually along one wall, in one corner or under one section of the house, and leaves the sound stumps where they are. The house is lifted locally, the failed stumps are dug out and replaced with concrete or steel, and the floor in that area is brought back to level.
Some contractors call this partial reblocking. The terms get used loosely, which is one reason two quotes on the same house can look so different. One may have priced a full restump, another a partial, another a relevel. Always ask exactly how many stumps a quote covers.
When partial makes sense
Partial restumping is usually the right call when the cause of the failure is local rather than house-wide. Around Werribee, Hoppers Crossing and Altona Meadows, the common local causes are:
- A drainage problem on one side. A leaking downpipe, a blocked stormwater connection or a garden bed that keeps one side of the house wet. The reactive clay on that side swells and shrinks far more than the rest.
- A tree close to one corner. Roots drawing moisture out of the clay in summer can drop stumps along that part of the house while the rest stays put.
- A previous partial job. A house that was half restumped years ago, with the original stumps still under the other half.
- A rear extension or sunroom on its own stumps that have moved differently from the main house.
If the rest of the subfloor is sound, the stumps are in good contact with the bearers, and the floor is level everywhere except the problem area, a partial restump can fix the problem for a fraction of the cost of a full one.
When partial is a false economy
Partial restumping stops making sense when the stumps that have not failed yet are about to. The clearest example is an older Werribee weatherboard still sitting on its original timber stumps. Timber stumps tend to rot at or just below ground level, out of sight, and if one section has gone, the rest are often not far behind.
Replacing ten stumps now and another twenty in three years usually costs more in total than doing them all at once, because the crew, the set-up, the permit process and the jacking all happen twice. The second job also has to work around the first.
Other signs that a full restump is the better option:
- The floor is out of level in several rooms, not one area
- Stumps across the subfloor show rot, sinking or loss of contact with the bearers
- The house has been packed and patched repeatedly over the years
- The original stumps are a mix of materials and depths that no longer support the frame evenly
Our guide 5 Signs Your Werribee Home Needs Restumping covers what to look for from inside the house.
How we decide
The answer comes from the subfloor, not from the room you noticed. Before we quote, we:
- Measure floor levels across the whole footprint
- Inspect stumps, bearers and joists under every part of the house we can reach
- Dig beside a sample of the stumps that look fine, because timber rots below ground and can look sound above it
- Look for the cause, such as drainage, a tree or a plumbing leak, because a partial restump without fixing the cause just moves the problem along
If the damage is genuinely local and the rest of the house is sound, we will quote a partial job. If it is not, we will tell you why and show you what we found.
What it costs and how long it takes
Partial restumping scales with the number of stumps replaced and how easy they are to reach. As a guide only, partial restumps across Wyndham are commonly quoted from around $4,000 to $8,000, against $10,000 to $18,000 for a full restump of a typical three-bedroom weatherboard. Our guide How Much Does Restumping Cost in Melbourne's West? explains what drives those numbers.
A partial restump replacing a handful of stumps is often a day, and larger partial jobs can run to two or three days.
Restumping is structural work, so the same permit and registration requirements apply to a partial job as a full one. Our guide to building permits for restumping in Werribee covers what that involves.
Fix the cause as well
The most important part of a partial restump is often not the stumps at all. If a downpipe has been dumping water against one wall for years, new stumps on that side will be under the same pressure as the old ones. We point out the likely cause on every job and recommend getting it fixed at the same time, whether that is plumbing, drainage or a tree.
Get the subfloor checked
If one part of your house has started to drop, it is worth having the whole subfloor looked at before deciding on the scope. Our House Restumping and House Reblocking & Releveling services cover partial and full jobs across Werribee, Hoppers Crossing, Tarneit, Point Cook and Altona Meadows. Book an inspection and we will tell you which one your house actually needs.