Ask yourself, ... Who's going to monitor this? The State govt's may have brought in the ruling, but how can they police it?
This rule has been around for a while in Qld and NSW from memory (not sure about other states). I've done several complete reno's in the past few years in NSW, Vic & Qld and just get on with it. If I do use a tradie, contracts never get mentioned. I must mention that I've been renovating properties on and off since the mid 1980's and I am a former tradesman painter, so I do have quite a bit of experience.
I can understand the contract scenario if you employ a builder or tradie to do the major share of the work to protect yourself, but otherwise it's doesn't appear to be a workable solution. How would the relevant bodies even be aware that you even are working on a property.
How many DIY'ers would even be aware of this rule, .... it's certainly not promoted on any of the home renovation TV shows (House Rules, The Block, The Loungeroom etc) or (home improvement stores like Bunnings, Masters, Mitre 10's etc).
I imagine a Cert IV could be useful in understanding the building construction process, but time may be better spent doing tiling, bricklaying, rendering, carpentry type short courses and just getting on with it.
Anyway ... just thought I'd throw if my two bob's worth .... best of luck which ever way you go.
Mystery
No one will know until something goes bad and you need insurance, or you sell the place and they ask for the permits to show it was done by a licensed builder.
If someone hurts themselves during the renovation, a pipe bursts and floods the place or there is structural damage your insurance won't cover it. You will be liable for the injury on your property carried out whilst illegal works was happening!
Thanks for both replies. I've lost count of the renovations we've done to different houses over the past 30+ years. Most of those would have involved painting, new kitchen, new bathroom etc. Most would have fallen under whatever limit may have been in place (if any) at the time.
We have tiled ourselves (but wouldn't do it now that we can afford to pay a tiler) but all plumbing and electric is done by licenced tradies (even though hubby can do much of this himself, I won't let him). We are capable of most of the work involved, and have done this for years without knowing there was any dollar amount limit on what can be done. I'm unsure of when this limit came in, and am only aware of it via this forum (thanks Perp). It does make me stop and think when we tackle a job.
I'm thinking back to our own bathroom reno last year in our PPOR. We had a builder quote about $30K to gut the old bathroom, resheet the room, tile, plumb... basically we walk out of an old bathroom and two weeks later, we walk into a brand new one.
We didn't ask for such a quote, but that is what this chap gave us.
Instead, we gutted the room ourselves, hubby resheeted it, plumber roughed in, sparkie roughed in and installed underfloor heating after our tiler did his waterproofing. Tiler came back and laid the bed and tiled. Hubby installed the cupboards for linen and mirror cabinet pushed into the wall. Plumber did his fit off and electrician did the same. Shower glass man fit his screen.
Each portion of the job came to a couple of thousand at most, but the total for us came to $21K.
I worked out that by using cheaper fixtures it "could" have been about $11K but because we used an in-wall cistern, a stone bath (after reinforcing the floor), stone shelves in the wall niches etc, the total came to about $21K.
In this case, just for this one room, it seems we "should" have used a licenced builder. The one quote for $30K would have gone to $40K with our higher spec.
This is just madness. I understand it may be how the government wants it to be, but who is policing this stuff? Who even knows we put in a new bathroom? We didn't have to have it signed off by anyone.
I understand the need to protect whoever may buy our house from a shonky job, and who are we to say "we have done a professional job" but there are thousands of people doing this.
At about the same time, our son had a "professional" install his own bathroom. It was not done to code, admitted by the professional tradie who did the waterproofing/tiling, and leaked into the downstairs. Our son paid another professional to fix it and got the money to do so out of the first professional. How is that a better result?
My reason for asking about the Cert IV is that whilst we have done owner/builder before for our first major renovation, it is not as easy to do this now. We are thinking of doing a few larger renos on existing IPs and don't want to fall foul of any legal or insurance issues.
