What Restumping Costs in Bendigo

No restumping company in Bendigo publishes a price. Not one. You can read every page of every local operator’s website and come away with no idea whether you’re facing three thousand dollars or thirty.

So here are the numbers, as ranges, with an explanation of what moves them.

These are indicative, not quotes. The final figure on a job like this genuinely can’t be known until someone has measured the floor levels and looked under the house — and this page explains exactly why. But you should be able to walk into a conversation knowing roughly which order of magnitude you’re in.

The short version

Work Typical cost When it applies
Jack and pack [[VERIFY — insert range, or “on assessment”]] Stumps sound, house has settled
Per stump, installed Around $280 – $550 The unit most restumping is quoted in
Partial restump Multiply the above by the number failing One side, or a wet area
Full restump Typically $12,000 – $30,000 Original stumps at end of life
Per pier, underpinning Around $1,200 – $2,500 Depth and method dependent
Whole-house underpinning Typically $15,000 – $40,000+ Ground won’t carry the load
Subfloor and ventilation work [[VERIFY — insert ranges]] Often the actual cause

The spread between the cheapest and dearest row is roughly tenfold, and which row you’re in is decided by diagnosis rather than negotiation. Why Bendigo houses move, and the three causes →

Why it's priced per stump, not per hous

Restumping is almost always quoted per stump. That sounds like it should make comparison easy, and it doesn’t, for two reasons.

First, stump counts vary enormously between houses of similar size. Stump spacing depends on bearer size, floor loads and how the house was built. A modest gold-era cottage might sit on 30 stumps; a similar-footprint house built differently might have 50. Two quotes at the same rate per stump can differ by thousands because they’ve counted differently — or because one has counted what’s there and the other has counted what the engineer requires.

Second, not every stump necessarily needs replacing. A quote for a full restump on a house where twelve stumps have failed is a different job from replacing twelve stumps. Both may be legitimate recommendations. They are not the same price, and the reasoning should be explained rather than assumed.

So when comparing quotes, the rate per stump is the least useful number in them. What matters is the count, and why that count.

Underpinning works the same way with piers, except more so — pier count comes from an engineer’s design, and pier depth isn’t fully known until piling starts. More on underpinning and how it’s priced →

The nine things that move the number

  1. How many stumps or piers are failing. The single biggest factor, and the one you can’t influence.
  2. Subfloor clearance. The most underrated factor in Bendigo. Gold-era cottages frequently have 300 to 400mm of crawl space. Everything takes longer lying down, and labour is most of the cost on this work.
  3. Access to the site. Narrow side access on an original goldfields block means every stump, every bag of concrete and every length of timber goes in and out by hand. An open corner block a machine can reach is a materially cheaper job.
  4. Stump material. Treated timber, concrete and galvanised steel differ in cost, lifespan and how they’re installed. Concrete is the common default; steel suits some situations and costs more.
  5. Depth to stable ground. Critical for underpinning, and unpredictable on ground that’s been mined, filled or capped. This is the variable most likely to move a final figure away from a quoted one.
  6. Engineering and site classification. A Class P site needs specifically engineered footings — no standard detail applies. That’s an engineer’s fee plus, usually, a soil report.
  7. Permits. A real line item, and one worth confirming is included rather than assumed.
  8. What’s found underneath. Rotted bearers, borer-damaged joists, previous bad packing, or old stumps cut off and left in the ground to rot out. None of it is visible until someone is under there. Subfloor repairs →
  9. Concrete and paving over the subfloor. Later verandah slabs, extensions and paths restrict where jacks and new stumps can go, and sometimes have to be cut.

Notice how many of those are unknowable from a phone call. That’s not evasion — it’s the actual structure of the job.

What's usually not in the price

This is where quotes that looked comparable stop being comparable. Every one of these is commonly excluded, and every one of them costs money:

  • Internal patching and plaster repair. Lifting a house moves it. Some cracking is normal. Who fixes it, and to what standard, is a scope question.
  • Painting. Almost never included. Patched plaster needs paint.
  • Cornice repair. Cornice junctions are among the first things to crack, and they’re fiddly.
  • Tiling. Tiled floors and wet areas are the most likely casualty of any lift, and among the dearest to reinstate.
  • Reinstatement of paths, paving and garden beds that had to be dug up or cut.
  • Engineer’s fees and soil report. Sometimes separate, sometimes included. Ask which.
  • Permit fees. Same.
  • Plumbing and stormwater rectification. If the cause was a cracked stormwater line, fixing it is usually a separate trade — and it needs doing first, or the structural work is temporary.
  • Temporary accommodation if the job makes staying impractical.
  • Removal of old stumps and spoil. Occasionally excluded, and it’s a real volume of material.

A quote that’s $4,000 cheaper and excludes patching, painting and reinstatement is not $4,000 cheaper.

What makes Bendigo specifically more expensive

Four things push local costs above what the same work might cost in a newer suburb elsewhere.

The housing stock is old and low to the ground. Gold-era cottages in Long Gully, Golden Square, Quarry Hill and Ironbark were built with minimal subfloor clearance. Working in 300mm of space is slower than working in a metre, and labour dominates the cost.

Original blocks are narrow. Goldfields subdivision produced tight side access. Machine access is often impossible, so material handling is manual.

Mixed stump ages are common. Many houses have been part-restumped once already, so what’s underneath is a combination of original timber and later concrete settling at different rates. That complicates both the diagnosis and the design of the fix.

Ground conditions can require engineering that other suburbs don’t. Reactive clay here carries deep-movement classifications, and the goldfield means backfilled shafts and uncompacted mullock are genuine possibilities. Where a site classifies as Class P, standard footing details don’t apply and an engineer has to design specifically for it. The ground under Bendigo, explained →

None of that makes the work optional. It does mean a quote that looks high against a national average may be correctly priced for the block it’s on.

How to actually compare quotes

Get three. Then ask all three the same questions, because the answers are what separate them — not the totals.

  1. How many stumps or piers, and why that number? If two quotes differ by 15 stumps, one of them is wrong about something.
  2. Did you measure floor levels across the whole house? If nobody took levels, nobody diagnosed anything.
  3. What do you think is causing the movement? Stumps, clay or ground. A quote without a stated cause is a price for a product, not a solution to a problem.
  4. Is jack and pack an option here, and if not, why not? There may be a good reason. There should be a specific one. What jack and pack is and when it works →
  5. What’s excluded? Run the list in the section above.
  6. Are permits and engineering included, and who lodges them?
  7. What happens if you find something unexpected under the house? How variations are priced and approved should be agreed before work starts, not negotiated mid-job.
  8. What’s the payment schedule? See below.
  9. Who’s actually doing the work, and are they registered to do it? Structural work carries registration requirements. Ask for the number and check it.

A quote that answers all nine clearly is worth more than one that’s cheaper and answers three.

Deposits and progress payments

[[VERIFY — this whole block must be confirmed against the Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995 (Vic) and current Consumer Affairs Victoria guidance before publishing. There are statutory limits on how much deposit can be taken for domestic building work, and the limit differs depending on the contract value. There are also requirements about when a written major domestic building contract is mandatory. Get the current thresholds and cite Consumer Affairs Victoria directly. Do NOT publish figures from general knowledge — these are consumer-protection provisions and getting them wrong is worse than omitting them.]]

[[Once verified, cover: the maximum deposit permitted at each contract value threshold; when a written major domestic building contract is required; and the fact that progress payments should correspond to work actually completed.]]

What’s safe to publish now: ask for the payment schedule in writing before you sign anything, and be cautious about any request for a large upfront payment before work starts.