by
February 9, 2020
If your house has a “sub-floor space” (which means you can get under the house) you need to put polythene over the ground. It gets pinned down, and taped up to piles, and the edge of the house. The standard cost is $8m2+gst, and it's not particularly difficult so you can do this yourself if you wish.
More for older houses, this just means that drafts should be blocked which is something all landlords and PM's would do anyway, but also that fireplaces need to be sealed off.
Drains need to connect to drainage! This comes about from one media story (which was pretty bad) about a landlord who would not fix a leak under his house. We don't know of any landlord who would not fix a leaky storm or grey water pipe. As this is a standard thing to take care of it is not something you need to think about too much.