Restumping prices

[hoidey]

Just found this site, what a beauty!! it's so good to be able to bounce things off each other.

I have just bought my first house and it is going to need restumping. The house at one end is about 1.5 off the ground and the other end about 4m. Half of it is not too bad but approx 10 yrs ago the old owners must have decided to try and extend, putting in a lot of effort for very average results. Its quite dodgey the work they have done. It seems to be lacking bracing too?

Anyway the building inspector from the sale told us that once restumped the rest of the house was in pretty good shape. I was a carpenter by trade in a previous life and still hold my licence etc. I am not sure wether to tackle it myself (dont want to look stupid in front of the yuppy in laws) or get someone more equipped in to do it. I was thinking of just using 4x4 steel posts to keep the termites uninterested (its in the bush of Far north NSW) the old posts are a combination of sleepers and poles. It seems the higher half of the house is the worst, so what sort of money would i be up for to get pros? I want to do this before even contemplating any reno work upstairs (common sense). Just wondering if anyone knows the method of going about it if i do have a go, and the reality of gear needed. number of acroprops, laser/dumpy, scaff, posts, crete etc etc. Help. Pros or DIY?

[LotteBum]

We looked into DIY restumping and decided it was far too hard, dirty, hard, not to mention dirty and hard.

We've decided to engage a builder to replace all the stumps under our house (currently all timber from 1940's or 50's, bar one which has been replaced with concrete at some stage). Our house requires 24 stumps, but we're also getting the builder to do the foundations for the front and rear decks on our house (10 all up). This amounts to $13,145. We are going with A1 Restumping (Brisbane), and so far, he has been very helpful. Job starts next week. Getting excited!

[SilentButDeadly]

You don't need much gear to replace existing stumps. Couple of jacks or acrow props and some digging tools mostly. In my experience, the only the other things you need is paitence and a decent dose of common sense.

Your advantage is that the house is way off the ground so it sounds like there's room to move. Which means you won't have too much drama using either a machine (like a Stihl auger, also known as 'The Maimer') or a hand tool like a Jarret auger (hard work but safer).

Use steel posts bolted on or embedded in concrete. How deep your holes are depends on the soil (in my area, they want you to go down a metre under a load bearing wall!). 100x100 is fine just make sure the wall thickness is up to the load. Cross brace the whole wall at the high end and up the guts (check out the Duragal site for info about steel subfloors.

Bear in mind that your are typically supposed to get a council permit to re-stump but if you do the odd one here or there........

[echnidna]

My offsider & I just finished replacing 60 stumps in a house.
It took us 3 weeks fulltime and we have all the gear including a jack hammer.
(Yet I used to put 60 concrete stumps in for a new house in 1 day.)

As your house subfloor is accessible the time you would take to do the job really depends on just how hard the digging is. (you can pick up chinese jack hammers for $200 to $400.

btw don't use a Stihl digger theyre too overpowered.
If you want to use a powered digger buy a gutless chinese one as its better to stall the motor than get sent flying if you hit something underground.

[peter_sm]

The quotes we got to do 68 stumps ranging from 600-900mm in length were between $6500 and $7500. Took them a week.

[echnidna]

musta been easy digging

[peter_sm]

You were two guys and took three weeks.

They were 6 guys and took 1 week. Equates to similar digging time? Yeah?

[echnidna]

I thought we took too long but digging time does sound comparable even though this was real hard digging with rocks and concrete in the way

[peter_sm]

They had all clay digging, so a little bit of water and off they went.

[hoidey]

Got a rough quote. It was about 8k until he heard the hight of the high side then it nearly doubled to 15k. Yes the hight is good for getting under but adds to price for length of stumps. Considering pros are insured and are a lot quicker than i will be than i think thats the go. Just trying to figure out if Tweed coucil needs to know or not. will prob just do the bad half as the rest only needs small blocking adjustments to level up. Thanks for all input so far.