Asbestos Survey

It's March 20th, 2014.

I'm meeting Terry, as in Terence Martin, at Sunny Acre for the asbestos survey.

We need a full asbestos survey to see where the asbestos is, what sort of asbestos it is and how to remove or encapsulate it.

Terry is very happy that we're not worried about damaging the walls. He tells me that he's been asked to do surveys where the owners have been surprised that he needs to dig into the walls. He starts peeling back wallpaper and chipping away at what is underneath. The ceilings come in for some scrutiny too.

The bad news:

All the external walls of the original house, ie not the extensions, have a layer of rigid asbestos cement internally. This has been wallpapered and then painted.








You can see in the pictures where I've stripped away the wallpaper. The extension is pink plaster and the original external walls are grey with various layers of paint.

The lounge ceiling is chrysotile (white asbestos) artex. It would be perfectly acceptable, according to the government, to leave it in-situ and just repaint it! However, if we did this, we would have to take precautions every time we wanted to put a screw or nail into the wall. Any contractor would need informing.

The good news:

All the internal walls, ie the ones that are between rooms - not an original outside wall, are not asbestos but hardboard. The front and back extensions are asbestos free. All ceilings, other than the lounge, are asbestos free.Woo hoo! This probably reduces the potential bill by about 30%!

When we decided to buy the bungalow, we had assumed a worst-case scenario, that all the original walls and ceilings would need to be removed. The amount of asbestos is high but not as bad as we'd planned for.

Removal

Removing and disposing of the wall panels is not necessarily a professional job, Terry tells me. The asbestos cement panels are rigid, not fibrous, and would crack with minimal dust rather than release loads of dangerous particles. The pieces would need to be double wrapped & sealed in heavy-duty plastic but would then be accepted at many domestic waste sites with specialist bins. Anyone doing this should wear protective overalls with a hood, wellies, gloves, goggles and face mask.  Careful cleaning of both the area and oneself also needs doing, removing any soft furnishings before starting.

Removing the artex ceiling is really a professional job but would be more acceptable to leave as many houses have such ceilings.

Options:

1. leave all the asbestos as it is and paint over it, encapsulating it - restricting what and how we can improve the property; 
2. remove and dispose of it ourselves - hard work but saving us pots of money;
3. get the professionals in - the most expensive option but the safest and quickest.

I'm intrigued by option 2 but we need to get some proper quotes to see just how much option 3 will cost. Time to arrange to meet some more men...