What to Check Before Renovating the Bathroom in an Older Glenorchy or Montrose Home

By Daniel Whitfield · October 21, 2026 · 10:00 am

If you own an older home in Glenorchy or Montrose, you may be thinking about replacing the original bathroom. Before anything comes off the wall, it helps to know what could be sitting behind the tiles.

Glenorchy grew after the war through government housing projects and private building. If your home dates from that time or the years that followed, its age can affect which checks come first. The same questions apply if your home is in Montrose.

When you're renovating a bathroom in an older home, a few questions are worth answering before you plan or budget. This guide covers three checks:

• whether your bathroom could contain asbestos, and where it can be taken locally for disposal
• why the waterproofing in an original shower can't be taken for granted
• whether Glenorchy City Council plumbing approvals apply if you want to change the layout

We finish with how these checks shape your renovation plan, so you can go into the project with a realistic idea of scope.

In this guide:

1. What to check before renovating an older bathroom: the short version
2. Why the age of your Glenorchy or Montrose home matters
3. Check 1: Could your bathroom contain asbestos?
4. Check 2: Original showers and pre-1989 waterproofing
5. Check 3: Moving the toilet, shower or drainage? Glenorchy City Council plumbing approvals
6. How these checks shape your renovation plan

Why the age of your Glenorchy or Montrose home matters

After the war, Glenorchy saw large government housing projects alongside private home building. Its population grew, including many European migrants. Across Tasmania, the Housing Department was set up in 1953. Facing post-war housing shortages, it built whole suburbs through broad-acre development.

Montrose sits within the City of Glenorchy too, so the checks in this guide apply there as well.

The age of your house gives you a starting point. WorkSafe Tasmania uses build era to describe how likely a home is to contain asbestos. Build era also tells you whether your bathroom was put in before the first Australian wet-area waterproofing standard. If you're thinking about a bathroom renovation in Glenorchy with a local team, knowing roughly when your home was built is a good place to begin.

Check 2: Original showers and pre-1989 waterproofing

The second check is the shower. Australia's wet-area waterproofing standard was first published as AS 3740-1989. Later editions followed in 1994 and 2004.

Bathrooms built during Glenorchy's post-war housing growth were put in before this standard existed. If your shower is original and dates from before 1989, you can't assume its waterproofing was built to a standard.

That doesn't mean the shower is failing. It means the original waterproofing may need assessing as part of your renovation scope, rather than being taken for granted.

If you'd like to know more, you can read about our shower and wet-area waterproofing work.

How these checks shape your renovation plan

Each check affects what happens first and what your renovation scope includes. Before you lock in a plan, run through this list:

• Survey before demolition. Arrange an asbestos survey before any tiles, panels or flooring come out.
• Shower waterproofing. If the shower is original, allow for its waterproofing to be assessed as part of the scope.
• Council timeframes. If you're moving fixtures, allow for Council's indicative timeframes of 14 days for notifiable work or 28 days for permit work.

These checks sit alongside the usual planning decisions. For those, see the broader planning steps in our planning guide.

Once you've worked through the checks for your older Glenorchy or Montrose home, you can talk to our local team about your bathroom in Glenorchy.