Independent inspection to AS 4349.1 by a registered building contractor. What you are buying, read by someone who has built. Report within 24 hours.
Lesmurdie was established in 1897 as a fruit-growing and rural-retreat property, and the ground it left behind is the first thing a pre-purchase building inspection here has to reckon with. Homes on former orchard blocks stand on ground that was irrigated, terraced and worked for fruit trees for decades before the homes arrived, and the legacy of those orchards, old root voids, remnant irrigation channels, old terracing and century-old retaining walls, can all affect how the ground behaves under a modern building. A pre-purchase read at Lesmurdie cannot treat the ground as neutral.
The orchard ground read is the central concern. As the root systems of long-cleared fruit trees decay over the years, they leave voids that produce uneven settlement, and compaction differences between irrigated orchard soil and the natural ground around it add to that variability. We read the slab, the footing behaviour, the crack patterns in brickwork and the fall of floors with the orchard history as the context, because a settlement finding on an orchard block needs that context to be read correctly.
Old orchard retaining walls are part of the read. Dry-stone or early concrete walls built to hold orchard terraces can be over a century old, and while they often look substantial they carry a different structural standard from a modern engineered retainer. We read them for movement and for whether they are still doing their job, because the cost of replacing a failing century-old terracing wall on a sloping block is a real number that belongs in a pre-purchase decision.
The housing stock from early retreat homes to modern large hills houses is read on its own terms, the older homes for the age of their fabric in a cool, moist hills climate, the newer homes for the standard modern hills read of waterproofing and roof plumbing on sloping sites over orchard ground.
A pre-purchase inspection gives you the building scope on its own, to AS 4349.1, with the defects that matter set out plainly and separated from the cosmetic. In Lesmurdie, where the ground carries its orchard history, that reading tells you what you are standing on as much as what you are standing in. The report follows within 24 hours.
We run the same inspection across the area, including nearby Kalamunda and Gooseberry Hill.
MISSING: phone number · Book online → · Flat $440 inc GST, report within 24 hours.
A building inspection to AS 4349.1 that reads structure, fabric and ground before you buy, with the suburb's orchard-era history informing the read of the slab, crack patterns and old retaining walls.
No, it is the building scope only. If you want the pest check too, the combined building and pest inspection covers both in one visit.
Old fruit tree root systems leave voids as they decay, and orchard soil that was regularly irrigated and worked behaves differently from undisturbed ground, producing uneven settlement that reads in the slab and brickwork.
Through the crack patterns, the fall of floors and the footing behaviour, read with the ground history as context to tell an orchard-legacy settlement issue from a structural problem.
Dry-stone or early concrete orchard retaining walls can be over a century old and carry a lower structural standard than a modern retainer. We read them for movement and integrity, because a failing old wall is a real cost.
Not worse, but a specific read. Original fabric in a cool, moist hills climate, with a century of use and layers, is what the age read covers, and the price should reflect its condition.
Yes. It sets the defects that matter out plainly and apart from the cosmetic, giving you a concrete basis to renegotiate or to proceed with confidence.
Yes. Large treed lots, established gardens and the moist conditions near the falls give termites what they use, which is why the combined inspection covers this in the same visit.
Yes, where there is safe access. On sloping orchard-history blocks the subfloor is part of both the ground and the building read.
Within 24 hours of the inspection, with photos and a plain read of what matters, so you can act before your offer conditions close.
Also available as a combined building and timber pest inspection in Lesmurdie — both scopes in one visit to AS 4349.1 and AS 4349.3, one report within 24 hours.
Combined B&P inspection →Our office is at Suite 55, 15 Labouchere Road, South Perth WA 6151 — on the Swan River foreshore near the Perth Zoo.
Tell us about the property and what you need. We'll come back to you with a firm quote and a time.