About Restumping Toowoomba

What this site is

This site connects Toowoomba and Darling Downs home owners, landlords and buyers with local restumping, house raising and underpinning contractors. When an enquiry comes in, it goes to a builder who works in the region and holds the QBCC licence the job needs. The site is not the builder. It does not quote, dig or sign anything; it explains what the job involves and puts you in touch with someone who can do it.

All work is carried out by appropriately licensed contractors. In Queensland that means a builder licensed by the Queensland Building and Construction Commission for any building work worth more than $3,300 including labour, materials and GST, in a class that covers the work. For restumping a house that is Builder Low Rise or higher; underpinning also sits under the Foundation work trade class. There is no restumping-specific licence class, and the old repairs-and-maintenance class, capped at $10,000, cannot alter a loadbearing member, so it does not cover this work.

A lot of the people who write in have just bought, or are about to buy, a Queenslander in Newtown or East Toowoomba and have a building and pest report in one hand that mentions the stumps. Others own a rented post-war home in Harristown or Wilsonton and have heard from the tenant that the back door no longer shuts. Some want to raise a high-set house for a build-under and have found out the stumps have to come first. The pages are written with all three in mind, as much as the owner who has lived in the same house in Rangeville for thirty years and has finally stopped planing the doors.

Why the guides are here

A restump is a week or two under a house surrounded by rules most people meet once. The Building Act 1975 and the building development permit that comes from a licensed certifier, which in Toowoomba can be council's own team or a private one. The QBCC licence at $3,300. The Level 1 contract from $3,301 and the Level 2 contract from $20,000, with the deposit caps that go with each. The Home Warranty premium the builder has to pay before work starts. The 20 per cent line that Logan City Council's fact sheet draws between replacing a few stumps and a job that needs approval. The heritage and neighbourhood character overlays, the flood hazard floor levels, the landslide overlay on the escarpment, and the council application before anyone digs near a sewer main. None of it is hard, but it is scattered across QBCC, the legislation and council's website, and a first-time owner has no way to know which bits apply to a low-set timber home in Drayton.

Then there is the ground. Within one city the houses sit on red volcanic ferrosol where the basalt of the Range has weathered, and on black cracking vertosol where the Downs begin. Red soil drains and digs easily. Black clay is the most reactive soil class there is, swelling after the summer storms and opening wide cracks through a dry winter. What stump goes back in, how deep the hole goes and how wide the pad is are not the same questions on the Range as they are on the plain, and only a soil test answers them for a particular block.

The pages here put the approvals, the thresholds and the ground in one place, in plain words, with a link to the source wherever a figure or a rule is stated.

How the rule pages are written

• Everything is dated. Each page describing a rule says the month it was written, and the figures quoted carry the date they took effect, such as the penalty unit value from 1 July 2026.
• The source is linked. QBCC for licences, contracts, deposits and the Home Warranty Scheme. The Building Act 1975 itself for what counts as building work. Toowoomba Regional Council for certification, overlays, flood planning, plumbing and building-over-services applications and contacts. Council fact sheets from Logan, Moreton Bay and Fraser Coast only to show where the accepted development line is drawn. The Queensland Government and the University of Southern Queensland for the soils and the geology. The Bureau of Meteorology for rainfall. The ABS and the Queensland Government Statistician for the housing and population numbers. The coroner's findings for the January 2011 flood.
• Where this site and the source differ, the source is right. That is stated in the dated box on each rule page, and it is meant.
• Figures are quoted, not promised. Thresholds, fees and dates change. The penalty unit moved to $172.70 on 1 July 2026, and council's building works table of assessment changed with a temporary local planning instrument that commenced on 16 February 2026. The pages say what the published figure was and point you at the body that sets it.
• Unverified things are said to be unverified. This site has not found council's current certification fee amounts, has not found a geotechnical source that assigns a soil class to any Toowoomba suburb, and does not quote the exact wording of the accepted development schedule. It says so, and says "ask council for the current figure" or "the certifier decides" rather than guessing.
• You are pointed at the right person. A restumper is not the person to design underpinning, classify your soil, assess landslide risk or decide a heritage application. Those are the structural engineer, the geotechnical engineer, the certifier and council's planning team.
• Nothing here is legal advice.

What you will not find here

• No testimonials or star ratings.
• No gallery of past jobs. Photographs are illustrative only and do not depict specific jobs. The Queenslander in the picture is not your neighbour's.
• No promise about the ground. The site class of a block comes from a soil test, not from a web page, and not from the fact that the house next door is on red soil.
• No prices for the work. Two houses the same size, one high-set on red loam in East Toowoomba and one low-set on black clay in Glenvale, can be priced a long way apart. The cost guide explains what moves the number. QBCC thresholds and the Home Warranty figures are quoted with their dates; council fee amounts are not quoted at all, because this site has not verified them.
• No claim that a rule does not apply. Whether your restump is accepted development or needs a building development permit is the certifier's call, and whether a raise or an enclosure underneath needs planning assessment depends on the overlays on the lot. The pages say to ask rather than telling you it is fine.

What to expect when you make contact

1. You give the suburb, what the house sits on if you know, what you have noticed inside, and a few photos. If the house is tenanted, say who can let people in.
2. The overlays on the property are checked from the address on council's mapping: heritage, neighbourhood character, flood hazard, landslide hazard.
3. A builder comes back to you with questions about the subfloor and the access, then a price range or a time to look.
4. A subfloor inspection, a written quote, the contract and the Home Warranty notice, then the building approval from the certifier and any council application the lot needs, in that order.
5. If a settlement, a building report or a builder's start date is driving it, say so up front. It changes what gets lodged first.

Suburbs and towns 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, from the escarpment suburbs on the eastern edge of the city out to the Downs towns to the west and south.