Reblocking Across Melbourne's Western Suburbs

One job, two names

Ask a few tradies in the west and you will hear the job called reblocking by some and restumping by others. The words mean the same thing here: the old stumps come out, new ones go in on proper footings, and the house ends up sitting flat again. We lead with reblocking because it is the word on most of the quotes our customers show us, but you can call it whatever you like.

Where we work

Our area is the inner and middle west, in four rough bands:

• The river and railway suburbs: Footscray, Seddon, West Footscray, Yarraville, Kingsville, Spotswood and Maidstone.
• The bayside west: Williamstown, Newport, Altona, Altona North, Seaholme and Brooklyn.
• The Brimbank heartland: Sunshine, Sunshine West, Sunshine North, Albion, Braybrook, Ardeer, Deer Park and St Albans.
• The Maribyrnong valley: Maribyrnong, Avondale Heights and Keilor East.

The houses we see most

Two kinds of house make up most of our work. The first is the period cottage: single-fronted and double-fronted Victorian and Edwardian timber homes, plus interwar bungalows, packed into Footscray, Seddon, Yarraville, Spotswood, Newport and Williamstown. Many sit inside heritage overlays and were originally stood on hardwood stumps that are now very old.

The second is the postwar weatherboard or fibro home, built in great numbers through Sunshine, Braybrook, Albion, Ardeer, St Albans, Altona North and Deer Park from the late 1940s onward. These were often put up quickly, on timber stumps that were never expected to last as long as they have.

The ground under the west

Almost everything west of the Maribyrnong River sits on the basalt plains. The rock lies underneath a layer of heavy, dark clay that is highly reactive: it swells after rain and cracks open in dry spells. In some streets the clay is deep. In others the basalt is only a short way down, which makes digging footing holes slow and sometimes means breaking out rock. Closer to the bay and along Kororoit Creek and Stony Creek, damp ground and salt add their own problems.

Keeping old houses going

A lot of owners in the west are choosing to keep and extend their older homes rather than knock them down. That makes the subfloor more important, not less. A rear extension or a new kitchen sitting on top of rotten stumps is a poor investment, so many reblocks happen right before renovation work starts. We are happy to work alongside your builder and get the floor right first.

What a visit involves

We take level readings in each room, go under the house where there is room, test the stumps and look over the bearers, joists and packing. Then we explain what we found and what we would recommend, and give you a written figure. That first visit costs nothing.