How to Restump Your Elevated Home Correctly

Do you have a traditional home that is built on stumps and surrounded by plinths? If so, it may have stood the test of time until now, but as all good things come to an end, it may be time for a major reconstruction. The timber stumps beneath have withstood their share of stress over the decades and have done a good job at levelling out your home but they're not meant to last forever. With an eye to the future, these stumps will need to be replaced. What are the steps involved in a job like this?

Specific Approach

Your home may have been elevated in this way due to the risk of flooding from a nearby waterway. The ground floor of your home is therefore a metre or so above the soil level and there is plenty of room underneath the house for workers to access the stumps.

Step-By-Step

To begin with, they will typically remove all the plinths that are placed around the edge of your home, between the floor level and the ground. They will also make sure that they clean up any debris or bushes and get rid of any excess soil so that they can get to work with no impediment.

The first job will be to stabilise your home by installing a range of pneumatic jacks, placed on top of concrete blocks under each load-bearing member. Once this has been done and the home is secure, they will then remove the timber stumps in their entirety. They will also excavate immediately beneath the stump location and especially underneath any load-bearing walls above, so that concrete can be installed as part of the next step.

It is important to introduce concrete that is carefully mixed to provide the greatest level of support going forward, and it will be poured into each crater to form a bed for the new concrete stumps. As the liquid concrete is pumped into the site, each stump will be held in place until the entire mixture has been allowed to set several days later.

Finally, wooden planks will be introduced around the circumference of the building and the plinths will then be nailed back into place after final inspection.

Best Approach

As you can see, this is an involved job and needs to be done correctly to make sure that the home is perfectly balanced and will be "all set" for some time into the future. Make sure that you choose your restumping contractor wisely.