Does Home Insurance Cover Restumping?

The general rule

Home insurance is built to cover sudden, unforeseen events - fires, storms, burst pipes. It is not built to cover things that happen slowly, and almost everything that kills stumps happens slowly. Standard policies exclude gradual soil movement, settlement and subsidence, timber rot, termite damage, and wear and tear. A timber stump that rotted through over fifteen years, or a house that settled as reactive clay dried out over several summers, falls squarely inside those exclusions.

Insurers treat stumps the way they treat roofs: a maintenance item that owners are expected to inspect and renew. That is frustrating when you are facing a $15,000-$30,000 bill, but it is consistent across the industry, and the same logic applies to underpinning on slab homes.

The exceptions worth knowing

The word doing all the work in your policy is sudden. Movement caused by a one-off insured event sits outside the maintenance exclusions:

• Escape of liquid - a burst or leaking pipe that washes out or saturates the soil under stumps. This is the most common successful path for subfloor claims.
• Storm and flood - water inundation that scours soil or shifts footings, where your policy includes the relevant cover.
• Impact - a vehicle, falling tree or similar striking the structure.

Even then, insurers typically cover the damage the event caused - not the renewal of stumps that were already at end of life. Expect any settlement to reflect that distinction.

How insurers assess stump claims

Everything turns on cause attribution. The insurer's assessor, and often their engineer, will look under the house and form a view on what the dominant cause was: a sudden event, or long-term rot, termites and soil movement. The condition of the stumps matters enormously here - a sound stump undermined by a burst pipe reads very differently from a rotted stump that finally gave way during a storm. Your maintenance history matters too: years of blocked gutters or known drainage faults hand the insurer an easy gradual-cause argument.

Stumps sinking after a flood or burst pipe: who to call first

If floodwater or a long-running leak has been under the house and the floors have dropped, the order matters more than speed. Do it this way:

1. Make the house safe. If floors are bouncing, doors have jammed or the house is visibly out of level, keep people off the worst areas and have power and gas checked before anyone goes into the subfloor. If water is still rising, the SES is the first call, not a tradesperson.
2. Photograph everything before cleanup. The water line on stumps and walls, scour holes around stump bases, mud and debris in the subfloor, new cracks and gaps under skirting, and a spirit level or a marble on the floor showing the fall. Note the dates the water arrived and left.
3. Lodge the claim with your insurer before any permanent work. Say plainly what happened and when, and ask whether an assessor is coming. Emergency make-safe work is fine; keep the receipts.
4. Get the stumps and soil assessed. A restumper can check stump condition and footing, take floor levels and tell you whether a relevel or a replacement is needed. If the movement is severe or the insurer disputes the cause, an independent engineer's report puts a cause finding in writing that the assessor cannot simply wave away.
5. Get the repair quoted. Whether the insurer pays or not, you need a scoped quote to argue over or to budget against.

Why stumps sink after water gets under the house

Saturated clay and sand lose bearing, so stumps that sat happily for decades punch down into soft ground. Moving water scours the soil from around concrete stump footings. Timber stumps that were marginal rot quickly once soaked and stay wet in a muddy subfloor. And the ground keeps moving for months as it dries, so a house can look settled once the water is gone and then drop further over the following season. That is the strongest reason to get an assessment now: a report done soon after the event ties the movement to the flood or the leak, while one done a year later reads as gradual settlement, which is exactly the exclusion insurers rely on.

Flood, storm or escape of liquid: which one applies

A burst or leaking pipe is usually claimable as sudden escape of liquid, and that includes the washout under affected stumps. Storm cover generally takes in rainwater and runoff damage. Flood, meaning water from a river, creek, dam or lake overflowing, is a separate item in many Australian policies and some owners have opted out of it to lower the premium. Check your product disclosure statement for the flood definition before you lodge, so you describe the event in the terms your policy actually uses.

Disaster payments and flood grants

After a declared disaster, the federal Disaster Recovery Payment and state recovery grants may be open to affected households. They help with immediate costs and the gap left by an insurance shortfall, but they are not designed to fund restumping, so do not wait on them before lodging your claim or booking an assessment.

Relevel or full restump

If the stumps themselves are sound and only the ground has moved, a relevel (adjusting or repacking the existing stumps back to level) is a smaller job, usually done in days. Where stumps have rotted, cracked or lost their footing, those stumps need replacing, and a partial restump of the affected side of the house is often enough. The costs guide has the ranges for each.

Running a claim properly

If you think a sudden event is in play, lodge the claim before starting permanent repairs - insurers are entitled to inspect the damage as it stands. Make the property safe, keep receipts for any emergency work, and gather your own cause evidence rather than relying solely on the insurer's assessor. A plumber's report identifying a burst pipe, or an engineer's report ($600-$1,200) attributing movement to a specific event, gives your claim a spine. Be factual and specific about dates: “the floor dropped noticeably in the week after the pipe burst” is a claim; “the floors have been getting worse for years” is an exclusion.

Insurance won't cover restumping: what you can do

Most knock-backs say the same thing: gradual deterioration, wear and tear or ground movement, all excluded. That is the insurer's default position on stumps, not a verdict on your evidence. A declined claim is not always the end, and whether to dispute it or fund the work yourself is worth deciding deliberately rather than on the day the letter arrives.

1. Ask for the written reasons and a copy of the assessor's or engineer's report. You are entitled to both, and you cannot argue with a report you have not read.
2. Read your product disclosure statement. Find the escape of liquid, storm and flood wording and the exclusions list, so you know exactly which clause the insurer is relying on.
3. Get your own report. A restumper's inspection or an independent engineer's report that states a cause, with dated floor levels and photographs, is the piece most refused claims are missing.
4. Lodge an internal dispute in writing. Every insurer must run an internal dispute resolution process and respond within the timeframes set by the industry code. Attach your report, the plumber's invoice and your photos.
5. If that fails, go to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority. AFCA handles insurance disputes at no cost to you.

What makes a dispute winnable: a plumber's invoice for a leak repair, dated photos of the water line or washout, floor levels taken before and after, and a report that names the event as the dominant cause. What weakens it: cracks or sloping floors noted in a pre-purchase inspection years earlier, a history of drainage faults, and stumps the assessor can show were already rotted through. If the honest picture is mostly the second list, your money is usually better spent on the repair than on the fight.

What a denial should never do is stall necessary work. Stumps do not wait for paperwork, and a house left on failed stumps accumulates secondary damage in plaster, roofing lines and services. If the claim fails, treat the job as the maintenance item it probably is: check the signs guide to gauge urgency, get the numbers from the costs guide, and get quotes. Many households find a partial restump covers the genuinely failed stumps at a fraction of the full-house price.