Three jobs that get called the same thing
A floor that slopes, a door that catches and a crack over a window get described to us as "the foundations have gone", and that one phrase covers three different trades. Which one applies is decided by two things: what the house sits on, and what the house is doing. The method follows from those, and on the border the licence, the contract and the approval route follow from the method.
- Restumping (reblocking, on the Victorian side) replaces the stumps under a house that stands on stumps and bearers. The old stumps come out, new concrete or steel ones go in, and the house is relevelled onto them as part of the job. The Albury restumping page and the Wodonga reblocking page describe it under each state's rules.
- Underpinning supports a footing that has moved. The NSW licensing rules define it as constructing a new support structure under a wall, column or footings, and define piering, which goes with it, as putting in a column or post to support a superstructure. It is the job for brick, brick veneer and slab homes whose footings have settled or heaved on clay. The underpinning page covers mass concrete, piers and resin.
- Relevelling lifts a house back to level on stumps that are still sound. Jacks, packers and a laser level, no digging and no new stumps, or only a few. The relevelling page explains when it is enough on its own.
The overlap is real. A full restump always includes a relevel. A partial restump often ends up as a relevel with six new stumps. A brick veneer on stumps with a dropped corner is a restump at the corner, while the same crack on a brick veneer on a slab is underpinning. The decision starts underneath, not at the crack.
Start with what the house sits on
Around the border the housing stock sorts itself by age. Central Albury is late Victorian and interwar brick cottages and bungalows, with a minority of weatherboard cottages, many on timber or brick pier subfloors. Lavington is largely 1950s to 1970s housing from the years when Albury expanded. Wodonga grew from a town of 3,066 people in 1947 to 31,605 in 2011, with most of its housing from the 1960s to the 1980s and much of it described as brick veneer, though the house in front of you is the only one that counts. The newer estates on both sides, Thurgoona, Killara, Riverside and Silky Oaks among them, are on concrete slabs on clay. A quick way to tell which group your house is in: if there is a hatch, a vent row in the base wall and a gap you could crawl into, it is on stumps or piers. If the floor is tile on concrete and the brickwork runs straight into the ground, it is a slab.
| What the house sits on | What goes wrong | The job |
|---|---|---|
| Timber stumps and hardwood bearers (older weatherboard, some brick veneer) | Stumps rot at the ground line, lean, or are eaten by termites. Bearers follow. | Restumping, with bearer and joist work while the floor is open. |
| Concrete stumps, still sound, floor out of level | The ground has settled or moved under the stumps but the stumps themselves are fine. | Relevelling: jack, pack, check. |
| Brick piers under a brick cottage | Piers crack or lean, mortar fails, the floor above dips. | Pier replacement or new stumps between piers; an engineer if the strip footing under the piers has moved. |
| Brick veneer on stumps (common in 1960s to 1980s stock) | A stump drops under a corner and a stepped crack opens in the brickwork above it. | Restump the corner with small lifts so the brickwork is not stressed. |
| Brick veneer or full brick on a strip footing | The footing settles or heaves with the clay; cracks that step through the mortar joints. | Underpinning on an engineer's design, after the drainage is sorted. |
| Slab on ground (newer estates) | Slab edge heave in a wet winter, settlement in a dry summer, cracks at corners and above openings. | Underpinning or piering, or resin injection, as the engineer specifies. Never stumps. |
Then look at what the house is doing
The symptoms overlap, but the pattern of them usually points at one method. Three things to note before anyone visits: where the low point is, whether the cracks step or run straight, and whether anything changes with the season.
A slope that runs to one side of the house. On stumps, this is the stumps on that side, or the ground under them. The bathroom and laundry side goes first on most older houses, because that is where the ground under the floor has been damp for decades. On a slab, a slope to one side is the slab edge settling, which is a footing problem.
A dip in the middle of a room between two firm points. On stumps this is a bearer or a joist, not a stump. It is subfloor repair, often done with a restump but sometimes on its own. A slab does not do this.
Stepped cracks in brickwork. A crack that follows the mortar joints up and across in a staircase pattern is the brickwork telling you the thing under it has moved unevenly. On a brick veneer on stumps that is a stump. On a strip footing or a slab it is the footing, and underpinning is the conversation.
Cracks that come and go. This is the border's own symptom. The Bureau of Meteorology's Albury Airport record shows a mean maximum of 32.5 degrees in January and 13.3 in July, with 639.2 mm of rain a year. Hot dry summers shrink the clay and cold wet winters swell it, so on reactive ground a crack opens in late summer and closes after the winter rain. That cycle on its own is the ground, not a failure. A crack that opens and stays open, or widens each year, is a footing or a stump that is not coming back, and the clay guide explains why the ground here does it.
Soft, hollow or leaning timber under the floor. If a stump can be probed with a screwdriver at the ground line, or there are mud tunnels up its side, the method is decided: those stumps are replaced, and the only question is how many.
The three methods side by side
| Restumping or reblocking | Underpinning and piering | Relevelling | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fixes | Rotten, leaning, termite-eaten or sunken stumps under a stump and bearer house | A strip footing or slab that has settled or heaved | A house on sound stumps that has gone out of level |
| Does not fix | A footing problem on a slab home; a rotten bearer unless it is included | A stump house; it is the wrong trade for stumps | Stumps that have rotted or sunk; packing a bad stump just postpones it |
| Who designs it | The builder, to the stump type and depth the ground needs; an engineer where the surveyor or certifier asks for one | A structural engineer, always, usually with a soil test first | The builder, working from a level survey of the floor |
| Digging | A hole for every stump replaced | Pits beside the footing, or bores for piers, or injection points for resin | None, or next to none |
| NSW licence (over $5,000) | General building work; restumping is not a named category | Its own category: underpinning and piering | General building work |
| Victoria | Building permit; builder registered with the BPC at any job value | Building permit; excluded from the repair exemption by name | Ask the building surveyor whether a permit is needed; a builder who replaces any stumps as part of it must be registered |
| NSW approval | Listed as an exempt development example if the house is not raised and is not heritage | Not named in the Codes SEPP; the engineer and the certifier or council decide | The certifier decides; raising the floor level is a planning matter |
Why the method decides the paperwork
On the Albury side, residential building work over $5,000 including GST needs a contractor licence under the Home Building Act 1989, with penalties of $22,000 for an individual and $110,000 for a company. Restumping sits under general building work because it is not a named category, but underpinning and piering has its own licence category, so the word on the quote tells you which licence to look for on the NSW verification service. The approval route splits the same way. The Codes SEPP lists restumping or repairing structure foundations without increasing the height of the structure as an example of exempt development, subject to the standards in the policy and not on a heritage item, in a heritage conservation area or on State Heritage Register land; the NSW Planning fact sheet on remedial work adds that the work must be like for like and must not permanently alter the load bearing capacity of the building. Underpinning is not named in the text, so whether a given underpinning job is exempt is for the engineer and the certifier or council. The NSW rules page goes through it.
On the Wodonga side there is less to separate, because all three are building work under the Building Act 1993. The Building and Plumbing Commission's practice note BP-01 says any building work needs a permit unless exempted, and the repair and alteration exemptions exclude underpinning or replacement of footings by name. The City of Wodonga permit table lists reblocking or restumping of an existing building. The builder must be registered with the Commission to restump or reblock a home regardless of the value of the work. A written major domestic building contract is needed over $10,000 and, from 1 July 2026, Home Warranty insurance over $20,000. The Victorian rules page has the detail, and the border page explains what happens when one builder works both sides of the river.
When it is two of them
Plenty of border houses need a combination, and a quote that names only one method should say why. A weatherboard with a brick veneer extension from the 1980s might need its original stumps replaced and the extension's strip footing underpinned, two trades and in NSW two licence categories. A 1960s brick veneer on stumps often needs twenty stumps replaced and the rest packed, which is a partial restump and a relevel in one visit. A slab home with a sunken garage slab and a sound house slab might need piering under the garage only. None of this is unusual, and the sequence is the same each time: inspect, decide the method for each part of the house, then price it. The restumping cost guide and the underpinning cost guide describe what moves the price of each.
One more case worth naming. A house that was relevelled cheaply in the past, with stacks of timber or tile packing between the stumps and bearers, usually needs restumping now. Packing that thick means the stumps under it have been dropping for years, and the stumps that were packed are the ones to probe first. Relevelling a second time on the same stumps is the one option that looks cheapest and costs the most.
What this page cannot decide
It cannot tell you which of the three your house needs, because that is decided under the floor with a torch and a probe, or beside the footing with a pit and an engineer. It cannot tell you how many stumps have gone, which is what a restumping price depends on, or how far a footing has moved, which is what an underpinning design depends on. It cannot say whether a particular underpinning job in Albury is exempt development; the Codes SEPP does not name underpinning and the certifier or council decides. And it cannot rule out two jobs at once on a house that has been added to over sixty years, which on the border is a lot of houses.
Check the current rules before you rely on this
This page describes how restumping, underpinning and relevelling differ for homes in Albury and Wodonga and which rules attach to each method on each side of the border. It describes the rules in general terms as they stood in October 2026. Standards, forms, thresholds and fines change.
The authoritative sources are NSW Government, underpinning and piering work licence, NSW Government, general building work licence, NSW Planning, remedial building work fact sheet, Building and Plumbing Commission, practice note BP-01, when is a building permit required, City of Wodonga, do I need a building permit and Victorian Building Authority, clarification of registration requirements for domestic builders. Where anything here differs from those sources, they are right and we are not.
We are not certifiers, building surveyors, engineers, planners or lawyers. For what applies to your house, ask a licensed builder, a certifier or building surveyor, or your council (City of Wodonga on 02 6022 9300 or Albury City Council).
Accurate at the time of writing, October 2026. Always check the source before relying on it.