7 signs your house needs restumping — and 3 that can wait

Stumps fail slowly, then suddenly. The house whispers for years before it shouts. Here's how to tell the whispers from the shouts.

The 7 real warning signs

1. Sloping floors. Put a marble on the floorboards. If it rolls the same direction in several rooms, the frame has dropped on that side — classic stump settlement.
2. Bouncy or spongy floors. Floors that flex underfoot mean bearers are no longer solidly supported — stumps have dropped or rotted beneath them.
3. Doors and windows that stick seasonally. Frames rack out of square as footings move with soil moisture. Worse in late summer (soil shrinks) or late winter (soil swells) is the fingerprint of reactive-soil movement.
4. Cracking plaster, especially diagonal cracks from door and window corners — the frame is twisting.
5. Stepped or zigzag cracks in external brickwork. This one earns an inspection promptly — masonry doesn't flex, it breaks. Not sure how bad a crack is? The crack severity checker grades it in two minutes.
6. Gaps at skirtings, cornices or between floorboards — the floor is moving away from the walls.
7. Visible stump problems: leaning, crumbling concrete, or timber you can push a screwdriver into at ground level. Timber stumps rot from the ground line down, where you can't see it — a stump can look fine and be mush below the surface.

3 signs that can often wait

• Hairline cracks that open and close with the seasons and always return to hairline — often just normal reactive-soil breathing.
• One sticky door with no other symptoms — could be hinges, humidity or the door itself.
• Old, stable cracks that were patched years ago and never re-opened — evidence of past movement, not necessarily current movement.

The pre-1970 rule

If your home was built before about 1970 and still stands on original timber stumps, they are now 55+ years old — at or past the service life of red gum in ground contact. Even with no symptoms, a subfloor check every couple of years is cheap insurance; take our 2-minute self-check first.