Restumping advice
Reblocking vs restumping: is there actually a difference?
Published
Search “house reblocking” in Melbourne and you’ll land on pages that all say roughly the same thing: reblocking and restumping are the same job. That’s true, and if that’s all you needed to know, you can stop reading. But it’s not the whole answer, because “the words are synonyms” doesn’t explain why a single quote sometimes uses both of them — and when it does, it isn’t always a slip of the pen.
The short version
Reblocking and restumping both mean replacing the stumps under a suspended timber floor and re-levelling the house on the new ones. Same repair, same permit requirements, same price drivers. If two tradespeople look at your house and one calls it a reblock and the other calls it a restump, they’re describing the same scope of work. Our restumping page and reblocking page cover the process, permits and cost bands in full, so this article won’t repeat that ground — it’s here for the case those pages don’t get into: what it means when one document uses both words.
Where the two words actually come from
Melbourne houses built before about 1970 sit on individual timber or concrete supports under the floor frame. Originally, those supports were called blocks, and replacing them was reblocking — a term you’ll still hear from tradespeople who’ve been in the trade forty years, and one that shows up in older building inspection reports and some council paperwork. Over the following decades the industry standardised on stump as the word for the same support, and restumping became the newer, now-dominant term. Nothing about the physical work changed; the vocabulary just drifted, the way trade language does.
Both words survived in Melbourne specifically because Melbourne has more pre-1970s stumped housing than any other Australian capital — enough of it that both generations of terminology stayed in active use side by side, rather than one simply replacing the other the way it has almost everywhere else in the country. Ask for “reblocking” in a Brisbane or Perth builders’ yard and you’ll get a blank look; in Melbourne’s inner west and inner north, both words still work.
The genuine confusion: when a quote uses both words for different things
Here’s the part that a straight “they’re the same” answer skips over, and it’s the actual reason this topic generates search volume. Occasionally a quote or a verbal assessment will use “reblock” to mean something narrower than a full stump replacement: packing. Packing is wedging timber or steel shims on top of an existing stump to lift a sagging section of floor, without digging it out and replacing it. It’s a real, sometimes legitimate short-term fix — but it isn’t a footing, it doesn’t involve a permit, and it doesn’t last anywhere near as long as a genuine stump replacement.
Where this gets confusing is that some tradespeople, particularly older ones using the traditional vocabulary, will describe packing as “reblocking a corner” — because historically, adjusting the blocks under a bearer was itself a smaller job than replacing them outright. So in the same conversation, or occasionally the same document, you can end up with “restump” meaning full replacement and “reblock” meaning a quick pack-up of one problem spot. That’s not two words for one job; that’s two different jobs, and only one of them fixes anything permanently.
This is exactly the situation flagged in Footscray, where a lot of older stock has already had informal repair work done: packing shoved on top of existing stumps rather than genuine replacement, sometimes described afterwards as “it’s been reblocked.” If you’re buying a house or comparing quotes and the word “reblock” appears without a clear description of what’s being dug out and replaced, ask directly whether the scope is packing or full stump replacement. The two can differ by a factor of ten in price and by decades in how long the fix lasts.
What to actually check on any quote
Whichever word is used, the questions that separate a real quote from a vague one don’t change:
- Is every stump being counted, or is the number an estimate from outside the house? A subfloor inspection with a stump count is a different exercise to a walk-around guess.
- Full house or partial? Both reblocking and restumping are routinely quoted as partial jobs — often legitimately — but a partial scope described as though it were complete is how homeowners get caught out later.
- Replacement or packing? As above — ask the contractor to name which stumps get dug out and which, if any, are just packed.
- Is the permit included? Genuine reblocking and restumping both require a building permit issued by a registered building surveyor. If a quote for either skips this, that’s the flag to chase, not the word on the letterhead.
None of this differs between suburbs in principle, but the mix of original stumps, later patch repairs and partial prior work varies a lot in practice. It shows up often in Yarraville and Footscray, where single-fronted cottages have frequently had decades of piecemeal subfloor work by the time a new owner gets under the house, and in Williamstown, where some of the oldest cottages sit on bluestone footings rather than stumps at all and the word “reblocking” doesn’t even apply. In a suburb like Coburg, where post-war concrete stumps dominate and access is generally good, the packing-versus-replacement question comes up less often simply because there’s less old, patched-together timber subfloor to begin with — but the same check is worth making regardless.
The bottom line
As a general term, reblocking and restumping are the same repair, and you can use either word when you’re searching, calling around or comparing quotes without worrying that you’re asking for the wrong thing. The exception is narrow but genuinely important: if a specific quote or conversation uses “reblock” to describe packing rather than full replacement, that’s not vocabulary, that’s a different scope of work — and it’s worth thirty seconds on the phone to be certain which one you’re being quoted for.
Not sure whether your quote is describing a full restump, a partial one, or packing dressed up as a repair? Send us the details and we’ll tell you plainly what’s actually being proposed.
Common questions
My quote uses both 'reblocking' and 'restumping' in the same document — is that two different jobs?
It can be, and it's worth checking rather than assuming either way. Some contractors use both words loosely as synonyms throughout a single document, in which case it changes nothing. Others use 'reblock' for a smaller scope — packing or adjusting existing stumps in one corner — and 'restump' for full replacement elsewhere in the same house, because different sections genuinely need different work. Ask the contractor to state, section by section, which stumps are being replaced and which are being packed or left alone. If the document doesn't distinguish, ask them to make it explicit before you sign.
Should I search for a 'reblocking' contractor or a 'restumping' contractor?
Either search term should find the same tradespeople, because almost every Melbourne restumping business advertises under both words to be found by homeowners using either one. If a business only uses one term and seems unfamiliar with the other when you call, that's a minor flag worth noting rather than a dealbreaker — the trade skews toward 'restumping' now, and a contractor who has never heard 'reblocking' is more likely inexperienced with older Melbourne housing than the reverse. Compare quotes on stump count, access and inclusions, not on which word is printed at the top.
Does it matter which word is on my building permit application?
No. Victorian building permits describe the work by its technical scope — replacement of stumps and footings supporting a suspended timber floor, plus the re-levelling involved — not by a trade nickname. A registered building surveyor assesses the permit against that scope regardless of whether the application, the quote or the invoice says 'reblocking', 'restumping' or both. What the surveyor does care about is whether the scope described matches the work actually being done, which is a separate question from vocabulary.
Think this is happening at your place?
We assess before we quote — floor levels measured, cracks mapped, and a straight answer on whether you need work at all. Read more aboutrestumping & reblocking, or get in touch.