Call
Quickest option, especially if there is a date attached. Say the date on the call, and say whether you live in the house, rent it out, or are still deciding whether to buy it.
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. Under a high-set Queenslander that is a walk in with a torch; under a low-set post-war home it is a phone held through the access hatch, and either one saves a trip out just to look.
Request a quote
What helps with a quote
- The address or suburb. The overlays are checked from it on council's mapping. A heritage or neighbourhood character place in East Toowoomba or Newtown, a flood hazard area along East Creek or West Creek, or the landslide hazard overlay on the escarpment changes the paperwork before it changes the price, and it tells us whether the house is likely on red soil or black clay.
- What the house sits on. Timber stumps, concrete stumps, steel stumps, brick piers or a slab. If you do not know, a photo under the house tells us.
- What you have noticed. Which rooms slope, which doors stick, where the cracks are, and whether it changes with the seasons: worse after the summer storms or worse through a dry winter.
- Clearance and access. Whether the house is high-set or low-set, 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 battens or lattice, and anything under the floor you can reach: a stump at ground level, a bearer, the soil.
- Any paperwork. A building and pest inspection report, an old building approval or plans from a council plan search, an engineer's letter, a soil test if one was done for an extension.
- Who holds the key. If the house is tenanted or you are buying it, the name of the tenant, agent or vendor who can open the house and the gate.
- The date. Settlement, a builder's start, a raise or build-under that is waiting on the stumps, or a floor that is getting worse quickly.
Areas covered
Toowoomba City, East Toowoomba, Newtown, North Toowoomba, South Toowoomba, Harristown, Rangeville, Kearneys Spring, Darling Heights, Wilsonton, Wilsonton Heights, Rockville, Harlaxton, Mount Lofty, Prince Henry Heights, Centenary Heights, Middle Ridge, Drayton, Glenvale, Cranley, Highfields, Westbrook, Gowrie Junction, Cabarlah, Crows Nest, Oakey, Pittsworth, Cambooya, Greenmount and Withcott, along with the smaller settlements between them across the Toowoomba region.
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 storm or a landslip on the escarpment 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 ring Toowoomba Regional Council on 131 872, whose building team deals with unsafe buildings. On a steep block in the landslide hazard overlay, do not let anyone under the house until an engineer has looked at it. After a flash flood like January 2011, water under a house can have scoured the soil out from around the stumps without anything showing from the street, so get the subfloor looked at before the house is lived in again.
What this site cannot help with
Nobody here can issue a building approval, tell you over the phone what class your soil is, say whether your house is a mapped heritage or character place or sits in the flood or landslide overlay, or design underpinning. For a certification question, Toowoomba Regional Council's building certification team is on 4688 6828, with a duty certifier at the Toowoomba Service Centre on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9 to 4.30; for a planning or overlay question, ring 131 872 or email [email protected]. For a licensed contractor, search the QBCC licensee register.