From sloping floors to stair-step brick cracks — here are the clearest warning signs that the stumps under your Melbourne home are failing, and what to do about it.
Most older Melbourne homes — weatherboards, Californian bungalows, Edwardian and Federation houses — sit on rows of timber or concrete stumps rather than a concrete slab. Over the decades those stumps rot, crack and sink into our reactive clay soils, and the floors above slowly move with them. The good news is that homes give you plenty of warning. Here are the signs worth watching for.
None of these signs on its own is proof, and a house can show one or two for entirely innocent reasons. But when several appear together — or any one keeps getting worse — it’s a strong cue to get the stumps checked. Restumping (also called reblocking) replaces the failed stumps and brings your floors back to level.
If a room visibly falls away towards one corner, or furniture sits a little crooked no matter how you place it, the stumps under that section have likely dropped. A floor in a sound home should read close to level across its length; a noticeable fall usually points to subfloor movement rather than just old, worn boards.
Floors that flex or “give” when you walk across them — especially around the middle of a room or near a doorway — often mean a stump has rotted at the base, sunk, or pulled away from the bearer it’s meant to support. The timber above is now spanning further than it was designed to.
When the structure below shifts, door frames rack out of square. Doors that once swung freely start to bind on the frame, scrape the floor, or need a shove to close. If you’re planing doors every winter, the real problem is often under the house, not in the door.
Like doors, timber and aluminium windows are sensitive to frame movement. Sashes that stick, gaps that open along one edge, or a window that’s visibly out of square are all signs the wall around it has moved with the subfloor.
Hairline crazing is normal in old plaster, but recurring diagonal cracks — particularly running from the corners of doors and windows, or splitting along cornices — suggest the home is being pulled out of shape as stumps fail.
On homes with a brick base or rendered piers, look for cracks that step diagonally along the mortar joints in a staircase pattern. This is a classic sign of differential foundation movement and is worth assessing promptly.
When a floor drops, the skirting boards drop with it and pull away from the wall or plaster above — leaving a gap you can sometimes slide a coin into. Gaps that appear or widen at internal corners are a strong indicator of stump settlement.
If you can safely get into the subfloor, look at the stumps themselves. Timber stumps that are soft, dark and spongy at ground level have rotted. Older concrete stumps can crack, lean, or show “concrete cancer” where the steel inside rusts and spalls the surface. Any stump no longer sitting plumb and square under its bearer is doing less than its job.
Poor subfloor ventilation and damp accelerate timber stump rot. A persistent musty smell through floorboards or in lower rooms can be an early warning that moisture is attacking the stumps before the floors have visibly dropped.
A quick at-home check: place a marble or a round pencil on the floor in a few rooms. If it consistently rolls to the same side, your floors are out of level. It’s not a substitute for a proper inspection, but a marble that always heads for the same corner is a good reason to book one.
Melbourne sits on heavy, reactive clay that swells when it’s wet and shrinks as it dries. That constant ground movement works against the stumps year after year. Add a century-old home on original hardwood stumps, poor subfloor drainage, a leaking tap or downpipe, and you get the classic Melbourne combination: rotted or shifted stumps and floors that have quietly dropped out of level.
It’s why restumping is so common across the inner north and west — suburbs like Brunswick, Coburg, Footscray and Yarraville are full of period homes on stumps that have simply reached the end of their life. See where we work on our areas page.
Don’t panic — restumping is routine, fixable structural work, not a disaster. But it won’t correct itself, and a small problem caught early is almost always cheaper than a big one left for years. The sensible next step is a proper look under the house.
Not sure whether what you’re seeing is serious? That’s exactly what the free inspection is for. If your floors are also visibly sloping or sagging, our house levelling page explains how we bring them back to true, and if the issue is the ground moving rather than the stumps, underpinning may be the answer.
There’s no fixed number — one clear sign (like a stump you can see has rotted, or stair-step brick cracking) can be enough to warrant a look, while a single sticking door in a humid month might be nothing. The pattern matters more than the count: several signs appearing together, or any sign that’s getting worse over time, is the trigger to book a free on-site inspection.
Not always. Doors stick with seasonal humidity, and fine plaster cracks are common in old homes. But when cracks keep reappearing in the same spots, doors stay jammed year-round, and floors are also sloping or bouncy, the cause is usually structural movement below — which is exactly what restumping addresses.
You can do safe surface checks — the marble test, looking for gaps at the skirting, and feeling for bounce underfoot. Only enter a subfloor if it’s safe, well-ventilated and you can move freely; many Melbourne subfloors are tight, damp and not safe to crawl. The reliable approach is a free inspection where we get under the house, check every stump and measure your floor levels.
Restumping is rarely an overnight emergency, but it doesn’t fix itself and tends to worsen as more stumps fail and the structure keeps moving. Catching it early usually means a smaller, cheaper job and less cracking to repair later. If you’ve noticed any of the signs above, it’s worth getting a free assessment sooner rather than waiting.
Tell us what you’ve noticed and we’ll get under your home, check every stump and give you a straight answer — free, across greater Melbourne.