Your rights, in plain English

If your tiling or waterproofing fails in NSW, here is exactly who owes you what.

Three separate layers of cover apply at once. The Home Building Act 1989 gives you statutory warranties on licensed residential building work: 6 years for a major defect and 2 years for everything else, from completion. The Australian Consumer Law sits underneath that and cannot be signed away. On top, the tile and membrane manufacturers warrant their products for typically 10 to 25 years, and your installer should warrant the workmanship separately. Ours is 7 years. If a shower is leaking today, put it in writing today, because every clock starts from when you knew.

Get a written quote Is my shower leaking?

The cover reference table

What is covered, by whom, and for how long.

People assume there is one warranty. There are at least four things running in parallel, and the one that actually pays depends on what failed. Read down the middle column: it tells you who to write to first.

Layer of cover	Who provides it	How long	What it covers	What it does not
Statutory warranty, major defect Home Building Act 1989 (NSW)	The licensed contractor who did the work, and it runs with the property to the next owner	6 years from completion	Failures in a major element, including a wet-area membrane failure that lets water into the building fabric, structural movement, and work that makes the home uninhabitable or unusable for its purpose.	Damage you caused, normal wear, or work done unlicensed or cash in hand.
Statutory warranty, other defects Home Building Act 1989 (NSW)	The licensed contractor, also running with the property	2 years from completion	Everything that is not a major defect: drummy or lipping tiles, poor set out, uneven grout lines, a floor that ponds slightly, trims that were never siliconed.	Cosmetic ageing, grout staining, silicone reaching the end of its life.
Australian Consumer Law guarantees	Whoever supplied the goods or the service, enforced through NSW Fair Trading	A reasonable period, judged on price, product and claims made	Services delivered with due care and skill and fit for purpose. Goods of acceptable quality. Cannot be excluded, restricted or modified by any contract term.	A change of mind on the tile you chose, or a result you were clearly warned about.
Tile manufacturer product warranty	The tile brand, claimed through the supplier you bought from	Commonly 10 to 25 years	Manufacturing defect: crazing, delamination, a glaze failing, colour variation outside the stated batch tolerance.	Labour to remove and reinstall, usually. Read that clause before you assume.
Membrane system warranty	The membrane manufacturer	Commonly 10 to 25 years, and often only when the full system was used	The membrane itself breaking down. Some brands offer a longer warranty when an accredited applicator installs the complete system.	Membrane applied under-thickness, over a dusty substrate, or mixed with another brand of primer. That is a workmanship issue.
Installer workmanship warranty	Us, in writing on your invoice	7 years on tiling and waterproofing workmanship	Drummy tiles, lipping, falls that pond, membrane detailing, silicone that failed in the first year, grout that crumbles early.	Grout discolouration, silicone at the end of its service life, damage from a leaking tap or a moved wall.
Home Building Compensation cover	The insurer, arranged by the contractor before taking payment	Aligned with the statutory warranty periods	A safety net for residential building work above the insurance threshold when the contractor has died, disappeared, become insolvent or had their licence suspended for not complying with a money order.	A contractor who is still trading. While they are contactable, you claim against them, not the policy.

General guidance for New South Wales, current for 2026. Warranty periods and the dollar thresholds that trigger a written contract and insurance are set by legislation and can change: confirm the current figures with NSW Fair Trading before you rely on them.

The escalation ladder

What to do, in order, with the timeframe for each step.

Work down this list. Do not skip steps, because every later step asks whether you tried the earlier one, and the answer changes how it goes for you.

Step	What you do	Timeframe	Why it matters
1. Record it	Photograph the defect with something for scale and a date visible. Note when you first saw it. Do not repair or cover it.	The day you notice	Every dispute turns on when the defect appeared and what it looked like before anyone touched it.
2. Phone the contractor and follow up in writing	A conversation is fine and is usually all it takes. Then send the same thing by email so it is dated.	Within days, not months	The Act expects you to raise a breach within a reasonable time of becoming aware of it. Sitting on a known leak for a year can reduce what you recover.
3. Formal written defect notice	Dated letter or email listing each defect, with photographs, asking for rectification and offering access dates.	If step 2 gets no response in 7 to 14 days	This is the document Fair Trading and the tribunal will ask to see. Without it you look like you never gave them the chance.
4. Final notice with a deadline	One more email: the defects, the dates you have already written, and a clear final date to inspect or rectify.	14 to 21 days after step 3	It demonstrates you acted reasonably, which is the whole game in a building dispute.
5. Complaint to NSW Fair Trading	Lodge online with your paperwork attached. Fair Trading contacts the trader and offers free mediation, and can inspect some residential building work.	Once step 4 has expired	Free, and it is where most disputes end. A trader with a licence to protect usually responds to a Fair Trading letter.
6. Independent building report	Engage a building consultant to inspect and write a report on cause and cost to rectify. Expect roughly $600 to $1,500 for a bathroom.	Before you lodge a tribunal claim of any size	Your photographs prove there is water. An expert report proves why, and that is what a tribunal decides on.
7. NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal	Lodge a home building claim. It is designed to be used without a lawyer and there is a conciliation stage before any hearing.	Inside the statutory warranty period, and as soon as mediation has clearly failed	The tribunal can order rectification work or money. Once the warranty period expires your options narrow sharply.
8. Insurance claim	If the contractor is insolvent or has vanished and the job was covered by the Home Building Compensation scheme, claim on that policy. Separately, sudden water damage may be a claim on your home policy.	As soon as you establish the contractor cannot be pursued	It is the last resort and it has its own strict notification deadlines.

Timeframes are practical guidance rather than legal advice. If the amount at stake is large, get advice early. A leaking shower into a neighbouring bedroom is worth acting on this week, not next quarter. See our guide to shower leak insurance claims for the insurer side of this.

Want the licence number and the warranty terms before you commit?

Ask on the quote request and we will put the waterproofer licence number and the written workmanship warranty in the quote itself.

Ask for it in writing Waterproofing rules

Licensing and insurance in NSW

The framework, and the thresholds that switch things on.

New South Wales regulates residential building work through the Home Building Act 1989 and NSW Fair Trading. Three things about it matter to a homeowner in Wagga.

Waterproofing an internal wet area is licensed work, with no value threshold. It does not matter whether the job is $900 or $9,000: the membrane must be applied by the holder of the relevant waterproofing licence. Tiling itself does not carry that same specific licence requirement, which is why the useful question to ask any tiler quoting your bathroom is not about tiles at all. It is: who does the membrane, are they licensed, and will I get the licence number and dated photographs before it is covered. A confident, specific answer is a good sign. A change of subject is the most reliable warning in this trade.

Above a dollar threshold, a written contract is compulsory, and above a higher one so is insurance. NSW requires residential building work over a set value to be under a written contract in the prescribed form, and requires the contractor to take out cover under the Home Building Compensation scheme, and give you the certificate, before asking for any money. A typical full bathroom retile at $4,500 to $9,500 sits above both thresholds. The thresholds are legislated figures that get reviewed, so rather than quote a number that might be out of date by the time you read this, do the simple thing: ask the contractor to state in writing which threshold your job falls under and to attach the certificate. A licensed operator will not hesitate. Confirm the current figures on the NSW Fair Trading website.

Unlicensed work carries none of this. No statutory warranty, no insurance, and an insurer with a clean reason to decline a water damage claim. On a $7,000 bathroom the cash discount for skipping the licensed membrane is usually a few hundred dollars. It is the worst trade available in Australian home renovation, and it is the reason we itemise the waterproofing as its own line on every quote. The standards the work is measured against are AS 3740 for waterproofing domestic wet areas and the tiling installation standard for the tile work itself, both sitting under the National Construction Code.

Defect or fair wear

What is genuinely a claim, and what is just a bathroom getting older.

This is where most arguments start, so here is the line as an experienced tiler draws it.

Fair wear and tear, not a defect

Grout going darker or patchy over years. Cement grout is porous and it stains. In Wagga, water carried from the Murrumbidgee system leaves a light mineral film on shower walls that holds soap residue, so grout here discolours a little faster than in a soft-water city. Normal.
Silicone in the shower going mouldy after 5 to 10 years. Silicone is a consumable. Replacing it is maintenance, not a claim, and it is a cheap job.
Fine crazing on a decorative glazed wall tile after a decade. Sometimes a product issue, more often just ageing on a glaze that was never rated for it.
A chipped tile at the doorway. Something heavy was dropped. That is a repair.
Slight shade variation between boxes. Normal within the manufacturer stated tolerance, which is why a good tiler shuffles boxes as they lay.

A defect worth notifying

Water anywhere it should not be. A damp skirting in the next room, a stain on the ceiling below an upstairs bathroom, swollen particleboard at the shower door, a musty smell that will not clear. Treat this as urgent.
Drummy tiles. Tap the floor with a coin: a hollow ring over a patch means the adhesive never bonded. Within the warranty period that is workmanship.
Water sitting on the floor after a shower. A wet-area floor should drain to the waste and be visibly dry within minutes. Ponding means falls were not built correctly.
Grout crumbling out within the first year or two. Usually the wrong grout, the wrong joint width, or joints filled before the adhesive cured.
Lipping you can catch a toe or a mop on. Large format tiles need a flat base and levelling clips. Consistent lipping is a set out and preparation failure.
Mould that keeps returning in the same corner after a proper clean. Very often moisture behind the tile, not a cleaning problem.

If you are not sure which side of the line you are on, look at the signs a shower is leaking and how long tiles and grout actually last here. A photograph and a description will normally settle it without anyone coming out.

The document that prevents the argument

Most disputes are decided by the scope you agreed at the start.

Here is the honest thing, and it is worth more than any of the escalation steps above. Almost every tiling dispute we have ever been asked to inspect for somebody else came down to a scope that was never written down. The quote said "retile bathroom, $6,400" and nothing else, and twelve months later the owner and the tiler each remembered a different job.

A scope that prevents the argument names the areas to be waterproofed and how high up the walls, who supplies the tiles and how much wastage was allowed, the adhesive and grout products, the joint width, the layout and the set out reference, what happens if the substrate is found to be damaged, who removes and disposes of the old material, whether the falls are being rebuilt or reused, and the workmanship warranty period. That is one extra page. It costs nothing and it is the single highest-value thing on a tiling contract.

Read how to choose a tiler in Wagga for the questions to ask before you sign, and our 2026 pricing to see how an itemised quote should be broken up. If a quote you have in front of you is one line and one number, ask for it to be itemised before you accept it. Anyone reluctant to do that is telling you something useful.

What we will not claim

Being straight about the limits: we are tilers and waterproofers, not a plumbing or building company. Our workmanship warranty covers tiling and membrane work we carried out. It does not cover a tap or a mixer we did not install, a shower screen we did not supply, movement in a slab or a frame that was already there, damage from a burst pipe, or a floor that fails because the owner declined the levelling we quoted and asked us to tile over the existing bed anyway. We will always put that last one in writing at the time, so nobody is surprised later. We also do not take on structural repairs or asbestos removal: those go to the right licensed trade, and we will tell you so at the quote rather than after the strip-out.

Get a price

Get a quote with the licence number and the warranty written into it

Send your details and we will reply within 1 business day, and book a free on-site measure that includes a look at any existing defect you are worried about.

Warranty questions we get asked in Wagga.

How long is tiling and waterproofing covered for in NSW?

Residential building work done by a licensed contractor in New South Wales carries statutory warranties under the Home Building Act 1989: 6 years for a major defect and 2 years for everything else, both running from the date the work was completed. A failed wet-area membrane that lets water into the building fabric normally sits in the 6 year major defect category. Those warranties attach to the property rather than to you, so they pass to whoever buys the house inside the period, and they sit on top of any warranty the tiler or the membrane manufacturer gives you separately.

What is the difference between the product warranty and the workmanship warranty?

The product warranty comes from the manufacturer and covers the item itself failing: a porcelain tile crazing or delaminating, or a membrane breaking down chemically. It is typically 10 to 25 years on tiles and 10 to 25 years on a branded membrane system, and it almost always covers replacement material only, not the labour to pull the room apart. The workmanship warranty comes from the installer and covers the work: drummy tiles, lipping, falls that pond, a membrane that was applied too thin or terminated too low. Ours is 7 years on tiling and waterproofing workmanship. Most real-world failures are workmanship, not product.

Is discoloured grout or mouldy silicone a warranty claim?

Generally no. Grout is a cement product and it stains, and silicone is a consumable sealant with a service life of roughly 5 to 10 years in a shower before it needs replacing. Both are fair wear and tear rather than a defect, and a regrout and reseal at $350 to $700 is normal maintenance. What is not fair wear and tear is grout that crumbles out within the first year or two, silicone that has never adhered to one side of the joint, or mould that keeps returning in the same corner after a proper clean, because that last one usually means moisture is getting behind the tiles.

What paperwork do I need to keep to make a claim stick?

Keep the written contract or accepted quote with the scope on it, the tax invoices and proof of payment, the waterproofer name and NSW licence number, the dated photographs of the finished membrane taken before tiling, the product datasheets for the membrane and the adhesive, and the certificate of insurance under the Home Building Compensation scheme if the contract was over the insurance threshold. Photograph the defect the day you notice it and keep every text and email in one folder. An assessor asks for exactly this list, and the claims that fail are almost always the ones with nothing written down.

What should a written defect notice actually say?

Keep it short, factual and dated. Name the address and the job, state the date the work was completed, describe the specific defect and where it is, say when you first noticed it, attach photographs, ask for the defect to be rectified, and nominate a reasonable date to inspect, which for a leak is usually within 7 days and for a cosmetic defect within 21. Send it by email so there is a timestamp. Do not threaten, do not demand a refund in the first letter and do not get somebody else to pull the work apart before the original contractor has had the chance to look at it, because that can weaken your position.

What happens if the contractor will not come back?

Escalate in order. Written defect notice first, then a follow-up giving a clear final date. If that fails, lodge a complaint with NSW Fair Trading, which can contact the trader and offer free mediation and is the step most disputes settle at. If mediation does not resolve it, a home building claim goes to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal, which handles residential building disputes and is designed to be used without a lawyer. Lodge inside the statutory warranty period, get an independent building report first if the money involved is significant, and if the builder has become insolvent and the job was insured under the Home Building Compensation scheme, claim against that policy instead.

Something already failing?

Send a photograph with your enquiry. We will tell you honestly whether it is a defect worth pursuing or maintenance you can sort out cheaply.

Send photos and get an answer Tile and regrout repairs