Water damage restoration in Perth

Western Australia structures its building-work protection differently from the eastern states, and the difference is worth understanding before you sign anything for a reinstatement: the policy is in your name, and it runs for six years after the work finishes.

The Home Building Contracts Act 1991

Three features of the Western Australian arrangement, all from Building and Energy’s published fact sheet:

1. The policy is taken out in the owner’s name. Not the builder’s. You are the insured, which is a different relationship from a scheme the contractor holds cover under.
2. It has to exist before they accept payment or start. Same principle as every other state, and the same practical advice: no certificate, no deposit.
3. In most instances it runs for six years from practical completion. That is the part that distinguishes it in daily use. A restoration company’s own workmanship warranty is typically far shorter.

The cover responds where the builder cannot complete the work or meet a valid claim for faulty or unsatisfactory work because of death, disappearance, insolvency, or non-renewal or cancellation of registration on financial grounds. Building and Energy also states that builders must give the homeowner a certificate confirming the cover, and that failing to obtain it risks substantial penalties and disciplinary proceedings.

Owner-builders have their own version of this: Building and Energy states that an owner-builder must obtain home indemnity insurance if they sell the home within seven years and the building work was valued at more than over $20,000.

Where $20,000 puts Perth

A $15,000 Perth reinstatement is under the threshold and has no statutory cover behind it. That is the same position as Sydney and considerably worse than Brisbane, where more than $3,300 including materials, labour and GST catches nearly everything. If your quote is close to the line, it is worth knowing which side of it you are on.

Perth housing stock and what it does to a drying job

The Perth metropolitan stock is dominated by slab-on-ground double brick, which produces a specific and consistent drying problem.

• Double brick cavity walls hold water and hide it. Water entering a cavity runs down inside it and emerges at the base, often in a different room. The visible damage understates the wet area, sometimes badly.
• Concrete slabs are Class 4 drying. Moisture in a slab does not come out on a four-day schedule, and a job quoted as a standard dry that turns out to involve slab moisture extends. On the published rate card a dehumidifier is $149 per unit per day, so days are the expensive variable.
• Bulk insulation in cavities. Wet bulk insulation does not dry in place and does not recover its performance. It comes out, which means opening the wall, which means the job has become building work with a threshold attached to it.
• Reticulation and irrigation failures are a genuinely common Perth water source and they are an awkward insurance case: a failed fixed irrigation line is arguably fixed apparatus carrying liquid under reg 19(1)(a)(vi), and water entering a building from it is not flood under reg 34(1) because it never left a watercourse. Worth being precise about on the claim form.

Dry air helps, up to a point

Perth’s low ambient humidity for much of the year is a real advantage in structural drying: air movers only accomplish something if the surrounding air can carry the moisture away, and dry air can. It does nothing at all for water held inside a slab or a masonry cavity, and it creates a specific trap — surfaces feel dry long before the material behind them is.

Which makes the moisture report the document that matters. Ask for daily readings and a final report, and keep it. If mould appears months later, that report is the evidence that the building was dry when the equipment left — and NSW Health’s point that mould is likely to return unless you fix the cause is the reason the question gets asked.

Who responds in Western Australia

Department of Fire and Emergency Services coordinates the SES units that respond to storm and flood damage in Western Australia. DFES coordinates the SES units that respond to storm and flood damage in Western Australia.

As in every state, that is making the building safe rather than drying it. A tarped roof stops more water coming in; it does not remove the water already in the ceiling cavity, and the gap between those two events is where a Category 1 job becomes a Category 2 one. The ceiling page covers what to do in the meantime.

Disaster assistance

Where a disaster is declared, Disaster Assist (Australian Government), Disaster Recovery Payment is $1,000 per eligible adult and $400 per child. A one-off, non-means-tested payment, activated for particular declared disasters rather than available on demand. It is not insurance and it does not reduce what an insurer owes you. It is a Commonwealth payment activated event by event. No Western Australian state-level figure is published on this site, because none was read from a primary source.

Common questions in Perth