Call
Quickest option, especially if there is a date attached. Say the date on the call, and say whether the house is in New South Wales or Victoria, because that decides who the enquiry goes to.
Or send the details
Fill this in and someone will come back to you. Photos of the floor, the outside of the house and the subfloor answer most questions before they are asked, and they save a trip across town just to look.
Request a quote
What helps with a quote
- The address or town. It sets the state, and the state sets the paperwork. On the Albury side it also sets whether the house is a heritage item or inside one of the 16 heritage conservation areas, which takes the exempt development route off the table. On the Wodonga side the surveyor checks the overlays from it.
- What the house sits on. Timber stumps, concrete stumps, brick piers or a slab. If you do not know, a photo under the house tells us. A slab home with cracking is an underpinning question rather than a restump.
- What you have noticed. Which rooms slope, which doors stick, where the cracks are, and whether it changes with the seasons. On border clay a crack that opens in late summer and closes after winter is still a crack worth reporting.
- Clearance and access. Roughly how high the floor is off the ground, whether there is a side path a barrow or a small machine could use, and whether the street is one a trailer can park in.
- Photos. The worst room with a level or a marble on the floor, the outside of the house showing the baseboards, and anything under the floor you can reach.
- Any paperwork. A building or pest inspection report, an old building permit, an engineer's letter, a soil report if the estate came with one.
- The date. Settlement, a renovation builder's start, or a floor that is getting worse quickly.
Areas covered
Albury, NSW, Lavington, NSW, North Albury, NSW, South Albury, NSW, East Albury, NSW, West Albury, NSW, Thurgoona, NSW, Jindera, NSW, Howlong, NSW, Corowa, NSW, Wodonga, VIC, West Wodonga, VIC, Baranduda, VIC, Killara, VIC, Bandiana, VIC, Huon Creek, VIC, Tallangatta, VIC, Beechworth, VIC, Yackandandah, VIC and Rutherglen, VIC, along with the smaller settlements between them on both sides of the Murray.
If it is urgent
A floor that has dropped suddenly, a stump that has given way under a load, or a house that has moved after a flood is a different kind of job. If anyone is in danger, call 000. If the house is unsafe but nobody is at risk, keep people off the affected floor, tell your insurer, and contact the council for the side of the river the house is on: City of Wodonga at 104 Hovell Street on 02 6022 9300, or Albury City Council. After a flood on the Murray floodplain, in South Albury or on Gateway Island, do not let anyone under the house until it has been looked at.
What this site cannot help with
Nobody here can issue a permit, tell you over the phone what class your soil is, say whether your Albury address is in a heritage conservation area or whether your Wodonga lot is under a flood overlay, or design underpinning. For a Victorian building question, City of Wodonga is on 02 6022 9300 and the building permit itself comes from a registered building surveyor; for a NSW exempt development or heritage question, ask Albury City Council. To check a NSW licence, use the NSW licence verification service; for a Victorian practitioner, search the Building and Plumbing Commission's register.