Bawden Home Care
Bawden Home Care is a maintenance service for your home, run by a registered builder. We go through the whole house — roof to subfloor — photograph every element of it, and give you a written report that says what needs doing now, what can wait, and what each item will cost. Problems found early are cheap ones. The same problems found late are not.
Fixed price, agreed before we book · Report in five business days · Mornington Peninsula & Bayside
In short
No one person is responsible for the condition of a house. The pool man looks after the pool. The gardener looks after the garden. The plumber comes once something has already failed. Each is responsible for their own part of it, and nobody is responsible for the building. Bawden Home Care puts a registered builder in charge of the whole of it.
One Registered Building Practitioner — Collis Bawden, DB-U 45837 — who knows the property, goes through all of it himself, and puts his name to what the report says. Not a subcontracted inspector, and not a different trade each time.
Almost nothing in a house fails suddenly. It deteriorates quietly for years, and the bill arrives all at once. Found early, the same fault is a small repair you can plan and budget for. Left alone, it becomes a large one you cannot.
Every element of the house photographed and rated, sorted into what needs attention now, what will need it within a year, and what is simply worth watching — with a price against each item.
Bawden Building Group are renovation specialists on the Mornington Peninsula and in Bayside, and have been since 2016. The same carpenters see a job through from beginning to end, and the same plumber, electrician and tiler have worked alongside Collis for more than a decade. If work is needed, that is who does it.
Each report stacks onto the last into a documented, dated history of the property — evidence if an insurer ever questions whether the home was maintained, and a file worth having when you sell.
It depends on the house — its size, age, wet areas and what else is on the block. Tell us about yours and we come back with a fixed price in writing. Nothing is booked until you have it.
Engaging us for any work the report recommends is never a condition of having the report.
Get a fixed price for my home See the sample reportWhy it matters
Almost every Australian home policy covers damage caused by a defined event, and excludes wear and tear, gradual deterioration, and damage that follows a home not having received regular maintenance. That exclusion is where contested claims are won and lost.
Damage caused by a defined event, on a date. A storm, a burst pipe, an impact, a fire. Something that happened to the house, rather than something that happened to it slowly.
Wear and tear, gradual deterioration, rust and rot, and damage that follows a home not having received regular maintenance. Faulty workmanship is generally excluded separately again, including any work carried out without approval or outside the building standards that apply in Victoria. Exactly what falls inside those exclusions varies from policy to policy.
Whether the home was being looked after. That is a question of evidence, and most owners have none to offer — no dates, no photographs, no record of what was checked, what was maintained, or what was repaired.
Where claims are argued
Insurers do not usually dispute that something happened. They dispute what the house was like beforehand, and who can show it. The pattern is much the same whichever policy you hold.
| If you claim for | What tends to support the claim | What tends to weaken it |
|---|---|---|
| Storm damage to the roof | The date of the storm, and a dated inspection taken beforehand showing the roof, its pointing and its flashings were sound | Cracked pointing, lifted capping or choked gutters that were already there, with nothing to show they had ever been looked at |
| Water damage from a failed flexible hose | A record of when the hose was last replaced, and a photograph of the connection | A braided hose of unknown age, well past the manufacturer's recommended replacement period, with no service record of any kind |
| Water damage through a shower or wet area | Dated photographs of the silicone, grout and junctions in sound condition, and invoices for resealing | Perished silicone, and staining that shows the leak had been running for some time before anyone noticed |
| Structural movement or cracking | An engineer's finding tying the movement to an event, alongside earlier photographs and crack measurements showing what the walls looked like before | Long-term settlement, or cracks that were there, never measured, and never recorded |
| Fire or electrical damage | The fire or electrical report, and evidence the installation was carried out by a licensed trade and certified | Wiring, heating or appliance work done without a licensed trade or a certificate of electrical safety |
| Damage in an area where work has been done | The permit, the certificates, the warranty documents and the builder's contract for that work | Owner-builder or unapproved work in the affected area, or work that does not meet the standard it was required to be built to |
This is the general pattern, not a statement about your policy. Every insurer words its cover differently and assesses every claim on its own facts. What is consistent is the question underneath: what condition was that part of the house in, and who has the evidence.
Work done on the house without approval, or outside the standards, can affect a claim for damage in that area — even years later, and even where the owner had nothing to do with it. On a house you bought, that work may well have been someone else's.
Budget Direct tells its own customers that where a damaged area is non-compliant, its builders “may not be able to warrant a repair” — and that it may then settle the claim in cash by agreement instead of repairing it. A cash settlement is rarely what it costs to put right.
As a registered building company, we recognise work that is non-compliant. Where it is present, the report records it and sets out what is required for that work to meet the Building Code and the relevant Australian Standards.
What the report gives you
Your report is dated, photographed and written. We keep a copy of every report we issue, together with the record of any work we carry out against it, so the file builds in two places rather than one. Keep yours with the invoices and you are no longer saying the home was maintained. You are showing it.
Some policies put it very plainly. Suncorp's excludes loss or damage “arising from any part of the home, unit, or contents not being in good condition”. Nothing in that wording asks whether you knew about the problem. The condition of the house is the test, and the burden of showing it falls on you.
Not every insurer sets the bar in the same place. Some will only decline if they can show you knew about the problem and left it. Some fold it into wear and tear instead. NRMA asks simply that the home be kept “watertight, structurally sound, secure and well maintained”. The wording differs; the question underneath it does not. What condition was the house in, and who can show it.
The report records every element of your home, each with a measurement against which the next inspection can be compared. That matters more than it sounds. It is evidence that your home has had a full inspection, and a record of how it is being maintained.
The same file does a second job when you sell. A buyer's inspector is going to find whatever is there. The difference is whether you meet that report cold, or hand over your own — dated, photographed, showing the home was always well maintained. One puts you on the back foot in a negotiation. The other puts you in front of it.
We are builders, not insurance advisers, and no report can guarantee how an insurer assesses a particular claim. What a report can do is make sure the evidence exists, and that it is dated. For what your own policy requires of you, read the PDS or speak to your broker.
The service
A 1920s weatherboard in Sorrento and a 2015 brick veneer in Mount Eliza need different things, on different timelines, at different costs. So we don't sell a fixed package.
The fee is built around your home — its size, wet areas, storeys, age, and what else is on the property. Tell us about the house and we come back with a fixed price in writing, before anything is booked.
Roof to subfloor, inside and out, carried out by Collis — a Registered Building Practitioner, not a subcontracted inspector. Every element of the house photographed, written up and dated.
Every finding sorted into three bands: what needs attention now, what will need it in the next six to twelve months, and what is only worth keeping an eye on. Each carries an indicative cost, so you can budget rather than react.
If any work or maintenance is flagged in the report, it sets out what each item would cost for Bawden Building Group to carry out. That work is done by the same team that builds our renovations, to the Building Code and the relevant Australian Standards, and contracted on Master Builders Victoria documents. Engaging us for any of it is not a condition of having the report.
Every report stacks into a documented history of the property — the kind of evidence that counts when a claim is questioned, and the file a buyer wants to see.
The inspection
A typical pre-purchase inspection is often over inside an hour, because it is written to a contract deadline. Ours takes as long as it takes to inspect your home properly. We are not producing a report to satisfy a settlement date. We are producing a condition report on the whole house, element by element, and it is completed when every element of your home has been recorded. What you choose to do with it afterwards is entirely your decision.
The inspection is visual and non-destructive. We carry a thermal imaging camera and a moisture meter, which let us check for damp and for missing insulation behind a surface without opening it up. Neither replaces opening a wall where that is warranted, and where a specialist is warranted we say so in the report. The full scope and limitations are set out in our terms of engagement, which we send you with your quote and again with the report.
Why it pays for itself
The majority of items in a home do not fail suddenly. Waterproofing fails over a number of years, and timber deteriorates one wet winter at a time. The cost arrives all at once; the deterioration did not. What it costs to repair depends entirely on how far it had progressed before anyone noticed — and on who ends up doing it. A fault found on an inspection gets quoted, scheduled and repaired at an ordinary price. The same fault found at nine o'clock on a Sunday night is an emergency call-out, at an emergency rate, by whoever happens to be available.
| A common building fault | Dealt with early | Left to run |
|---|---|---|
| A flexible hose under a sink or basin, age unknown | Replace the connection and record the date | Replace flooring, cabinetry, plaster and skirting through every room the water reached — and then establish, after the event, that a connection with no service record was being maintained. |
| Perished silicone and grout in a shower | Reseal and regrout the junction | Strip the shower, rebuild and re-waterproof it — and replace the wall framing behind it if the water has got that far. |
| Blocked gutters and downpipes | Clean and flush them | Replace a water-damaged ceiling, its cornice and its paint — then fix whatever let the water in, which is still there. |
| Failed subfloor ventilation and damp | Add vents, clear the ground line | Replace rotted bearers and joists, or restump the house. |
| Cracked pointing and loose ridge capping | Repoint the ridge and hips | A full roof restoration. If water has been reaching the battens for years, a new roof. |
| Paint failure on weatherboards and reveals | Prepare and repaint | Cut out and replace the rotted boards, sills and reveals first — then repaint anyway. |
This is not a prediction about your house. It is how these faults behave in any house, and yours may have none of them.
What the report tells you
If we find something that has already failed, these are the items where waiting costs money. Every season they run, the repair gets bigger.
Still doing its job, but not for much longer. A hot water unit in its twelfth year. A gutter run that will not see out another winter.
Sound today. Photographed, measured, and left alone — with a note of exactly what would have to change before it becomes a job. This is the list that tells you what not to spend money on this year.
Plenty of homes need very little. If yours is one, the report says so plainly and you have it in writing. See a full specimen report.
Sample report
Thirty-five pages. Every finding illustrated, referenced and priced. Then a section mapping the grounds insurers rely on when declining maintenance-related claims to exactly where each is recorded — and behind all of it a complete element schedule — every element of the house photographed, rated and dated. Not the faults. The whole house, including everything that is sound.
01 · SummaryThe house in two paragraphs, and what the whole year will cost.
03 · Works scheduleTen findings by priority — six calling for work, four deliberately not. The page most people turn to first.
09 · Insurance groundsTwelve grounds insurers rely on, mapped to where each is recorded.
11–35 · Element scheduleEvery element of the house, photographed, rated and dated. The part that makes it evidence.
A specimen, not a real client's home. The findings are typical of a 1980s weatherboard on the Peninsula. Costs are left out of this published example — the report you receive prices every item that calls for work. Illustrations here are schematic drawings; a live report carries a site photograph in every frame.
Read the full thirty-five-page reportHow it works
Five stages. You'll know which one you're in at all times.
A phone call about the home. We confirm the fee in writing before anything is booked, and it does not change afterwards.
We stay until every element on the report has been inspected and recorded. You don't need to be there, though most people join us for the last half hour.
A full report, with photographs and findings, within five business days.
Bawden Building Group quotes every item the report recommends, line by line. You are under no obligation to use us, and the report is yours to keep.
If you want us to. Same carpenters, same plumber, same sparky. We set the interval from what the first report finds, not from the calendar.
Before we arrive
Most of what limits an inspection is access, not weather. A little preparation is the difference between a complete report and one full of caveats.
A house you are not living in needs something different from one you are.
We run a separate service for these homes. Call Collis on 0407 642 980 or send us an enquiry, and tell us the property is a holiday house or one you do not live in permanently. We will come back with a fixed price built around that.
Every inspection is carried out under Bawden Building Group's registration and insurance. Any work you ask us to proceed with, once it has been quoted, is carried out under a signed building contract. Under a contract signed on or after 1 July 2026, eligible domestic building work valued over $20,000 carries Home Warranty cover provided by the Building and Plumbing Commission, the scheme that replaced Domestic Building Insurance. The inspection itself sits well below that threshold. Your works may not, and we tell you which side of it a quote falls on.
Why a builder
Collis has worked in the building industry for more than twenty years and has held his own building licence since 2016. Before that he spent years on heritage-listed homes across Melbourne.
He has spent those years taking houses apart and putting them back together — renovations, extensions, heritage restoration, and the problems that come with age. That experience is what sits behind every finding in the report, and it is the reason Bawden Home Care exists.
The report tells you what we would leave alone as plainly as what we would fix. Every item carries a cost you can take elsewhere, and there is no pressure to use us for a line of it.
Pre-purchase inspections are generally written to AS 4349.1. It is a sound standard built for one job: telling a buyer, before a settlement date, whether there is anything here that should change their mind. It covers accessible areas and visible defects, and it does not oblige an inspector to cover:
Ours answers a different question. Not whether to buy the house, but what the house needs. We go through every element of it and record it. An inspector can tell you that something is wrong. A builder can tell you what it will take to put it right.
| Typical building inspection | General home maintenance | Bawden Home Care | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who attends | Licensed inspector | Handyman or subcontractor | Collis, a Registered Building Practitioner |
| Time on site | Often an hour or less | Job-by-job | As long as the house takes |
| What you receive | Condition report | No written record | A full condition report — every element of the house photographed, with our findings |
| Costs against findings | Rarely | After the fact | A line-by-line cost for Bawden Building Group to carry out each item, given before you decide anything |
| Who does the repairs | Not their business | Whoever is available | The same trades who have worked with Bawden Building Group for years |
| How it is priced | Flat fee by property size | By the hour | Quoted on the house itself, fixed in writing before we book |
The business behind it has been renovating homes on the Mornington Peninsula and in Bayside for ten years — renovations, extensions, kitchens and bathrooms, heritage restoration and custom new homes. The people who will inspect your home are the ones who have been doing that work.
We would rather you checked than took our word for it. Our registration is public and searchable, and we will put you in touch with past clients before you book — not a curated list, whoever you'd like to speak to.
The team
Bawden Home Care is run by Bawden Building Group, renovation specialists on the Mornington Peninsula and in Bayside, and the inspection is carried out by Collis, a Registered Building Practitioner. If the report finds that works are required and you would like us to carry them out, they are done by the same carpenters, trades and suppliers we build with every day.
There is no obligation to use us for any work the report identifies. But there are real advantages to having the people who wrote it carry it out, and they are worth knowing before you decide.
Our team, the trades we work alongside and the projects behind them are set out in full at bawdenbuilding.com. It is the same company, the same registration and the same standard of work.
Questions
You can give it to them, and it is the right kind of document to hold. If a claim is contested, the argument is usually about whether the home was being properly maintained — and a dated, photographed report from a registered building practitioner, with invoices for the work done, is direct evidence on that question, created before the loss.
What we cannot tell you is how a particular insurer will assess a particular claim. We are builders, not insurance advisers, and nobody can promise you an outcome.
We quote on the house rather than publish a price list, because the work involved in the report is not the same from one property to the next.
Tell us about your home and we will come back with a fixed price in writing. It does not change afterwards, whatever we find.
Because it is a different product. A pre-purchase inspection is built to be fast and satisfy a contract deadline — often an hour or less on site, and a list of defects. Ours takes however long the house takes, because we are recording the whole house element by element, and every finding carries a cost.
If you need a pre-purchase report before an auction, a standard inspector is the right call and we will say so. If you own the home and want to know what to do about it, that is what we are for.
That depends on the house, and the first report tells us. Many homes sit comfortably on a twelve-month cycle. Exposed coastal properties, heritage fabric, and houses under heavy tree cover often want looking at twice a year, because fixings, flashings and paint age much faster there. We set the interval against what we find rather than against the calendar.
It compounds: the second inspection is faster and cheaper to act on, because we know the home and the backlog is cleared.
Entirely fine. The report is yours to keep.
Then that is the finding, and it is worth knowing. You are paying for a full report on your home, whatever it shows.
For most people, their home is their largest asset. Keeping it maintained correctly protects that. Being able to show it was maintained is what protects it when someone asks — an insurer, or a potential buyer.
It starts with a conversation, a fixed price before we book, and a report written by Collis, a Registered Building Practitioner.
Contact
Every enquiry goes straight to Collis.
PO Box 162, Mount Eliza VIC 3930
DB-U 45837 — Registered Building Practitioner (VIC)
Building and Plumbing Commission, formerly the Victorian Building Authority
