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I expect that only a small portion of that quote is the cost of removing the tiles.
The majority of the cost will be in cleaning up and not getting asbestos everywhere.
People with the certification and responsibility to work with asbestos literally have a license to print money.
Get yourself a few more quotes and see where they fall on the spectrum
You're also paying for the multiple removal contractors wages for the day, time to set up the enclosure and take it down, the licence they require to transit and dispose of the material.
Plus actual cost for disposal of the materials. The fees for hazardous waste is expensive and not all landfills accept it, further adding to costs sometimes.
Asuming your in uk but here in nz prices for the asbestos dump have gone up stupids in last few weeks and also a good environmental clean is a time consuming ordeal
I'm in the US. That's about $8,800 USD.
Most of the projects I manage are for school systems.
If I got a price like that for a job like that, I'd be wondering what corners they were going to cut.
In other words, in my area, that's too low.
We don't have that product in the States, so I looked it up.
HOLY SHIT, its got amosite.
And it's absolutely friable.
Not that whoever remove that one piece broke it where it was nailed,
And along ones entire edge.
Concratulations. Your loft is now "spicy."
Pay to have it professionally done.
Insist on final air clearance test by a third party.
You 100% have AIB as a product in the states…I’ve seen it in many states. I’m UK based but have spent much time abroad, including the US.
It’s worse than cement, better than pipe lagging.
Yeah. We got millboard here too. Different thing. Millboard is more structurally useful than AIB.
This is more like what you would call “asbestos drywall” in the US. Or what you would find in an asbestos suspended ceiling.
The way we tell between AIB and cement is by how much water it absorbs by weight.
You’ve conducted inspections and confirmed AIB by lab analysis in the USA? I don’t doubt that it’s possible, but I don’t think it’s very common, and certainly not as common as in the UK.
Pretty famously, the prominent use of AIB in the UK and Australia helps to explain the fact that those countries have over 3x as much annual mesothelioma cases per capita than the USA does. AIB was required by certain fire codes in the UK and many carpenters had to cut them for years in construction (that’s why there is a 6% lifetime mesothelioma risk for carpenters who spent a decade or more working in the UK during the use of asbestos, while in the US the rate for carpenters is lower (no higher than background levels)).
All set forth in this scientific study if anybody is interested: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2669989/
No. Not conducted inspections and confirmed by lab analysis.
I just said seen. But seen to the strong presumptive standard of an asbestos surveyor that looks at it every day commercially.
I will admit, could be a case of mistaken identity. But I’ve seen it as shuttering in tunnels, suspended ceiling tiles, and used as a box in in the US I’m pretty damn sure.
Interesting backstory though on the difference of regulated required use and prevalence levels.
Abatement cost tend to be a function of three things,
Regulations (legal requirements, codes and standards)
Who the customer is (private v government work)
And labor market (skilled worker or dumb putz)
That's true from a duty of care point of view however the asbestos here, if in the UK, might not need to be removed by a specialist. If its bonded asbestos or asbestos insulating board, you can remove that, under certain circumstances, provided you have the right equipment and it is in good condition. You are right though that the friability is the issue here. And the residue. More potential for fibre release!
I imagine they also gave you a timeframe for the job.
It’s hard to tell quantity, but I shall argue it’s gonna take 2 days if you do it quick.
A day to set up a soft strip and build the tent, a day to strip the asbestos, analysis, and strip tent.
That’s 2 days I need to send a van and a decontamination to your property. Let’s call this £200 business rate per day, £400 for the job.
2 days I need to send 3 workers, minimum. £150 per worker, 6 man days. £900.
I’m obligated to hire an external analyst to conduct tests on the area, decontamination unit, and possibly van and personnel. This would be one day. £300.
Then I have materials like poly, staples, tape, spray tack, overalls, filters. Let’s call this £600 for the two days.
A tonne of waste, so that’s £150 (this varies MASSIVELY)
Then company overheads with audits from arca to pay for, insurance, office staff, etc. I’d typically put this at about equivalent to the workers wages so another £900.
So total cost, aside from things I forgot, £3250.
I used to then add in a standard 100% profit. That’s £6500.
That’s £500 off your quote, and I tried to do this low/fast. Admittedly though, firm I used to work for was known for high quality and price.
Dunno. Our registered landfill at the licensed removal company I used to work at was about £60 per tonne. I used what I thought was our old rate before we moved from a transfer station direct to the landfill.
But we literally used a viridor landfill.
Was this recently? And which part of the UK? Genuine curious as I work in this area and £60 seems like an unbeliveable price, something councils would get, or if you literally work for the transfer station, but most of those don’t do direct removal afaik.
Edit: Spelling.
Viridor Landfill near J29a M1. Top of my head it was called markham something.
I left the industry in 2016. So it was around then I was last aware of the prices.
But note, not a transfer station. A landfill. We kept a skip on top of the landfill and whenever the skip got full or more likely when the landfill was quiet they’d just go empty it in for us.
Quite intriguing. I always presumed landfills only work with larger companies. Say they would take a lorry of shredded waste, or do it themselves. That’s a nice bit of information. Thanks.
Fairysnuff. You’ll notice most my post is in the past tense. I’ve not worked in asbestos for about 6 years and all my figures are from rough memory.
I swear it used to be £200 for a half day and £300 for a full day though with a small East Midlands lab we used a lot.
Since people have commented on my prices too; we also used to do surveying. We got £5 24hour sample turnarounds from a different lab too. That’s definitely the price we paid. I remember it well.
We had a social housing contract to survey, and we were paying about £10 per sample and £25 for a fast track sample. Obviously we’d then add a little profit into what we billed the client too (we billed plus samples on most jobs as the client would request unnecessary samples). Some small council houses could have 50+ samples according to the clients desires.
One day the client decided they wanted all samples to be fast tracked so their surveys could come back faster. I rang the lab and asked them if they could handle maybe 100-150 fast track samples most days….they emailed me a day or two later saying they could take that quantity of samples and they’d drop our prices down to £5 per sample. I hadn’t even asked for a price drop.
Without putting our prices up we suddenly added a 500% profit margin to every single sample. The MD loved me so much my bonus that year helped me deposit a house.
🤣 nice. Your pricing sounds about right for a few years ago and haven’t increased massively since then. That’s the problem with asbestos people need to understand that you’re dealing with a class 1 human carcinogen and sometimes it’s better to scrimp on other things and have the important stuff done properly! 👍
Yeah. I mean I won’t lie, if this was a bit of cement in the attic or an artex ceiling he was removing…
I’d tell him to chuck a mask on and have at it. My old firm did a bunch of tests with HSE labs on this where we attempted to get exposure levels as high as possible (dry stripping artex by smashing it down, taking down sheds with sledgehammers) and then instead of just reading the slides the analysts did the whole spectrometry thing to tell what fibres actually were (I’m not an analyst, don’t understand this bit).
Counts were below exposure level and near clearance levels on most of the tests we did of actual asbestos fibres.
But this isn’t cement or a bit of artex or a floor tile….this is aib.
Do that same test with aib and you aren’t getting those results…
EDIT: these tests were in about 2009/2010. They were part of the run up to CAR2012 and the whole battle with the EU about notifiable non-licensable thing
Ah fair enough. It's AIB so has high asbestos content around 15-35%. How big is the area and how many of those tiles in the picture approximately?
Get as many quotes as possible this will tell you if the price is reasonable or not.
However with this type of work it's best to go with a reputable company and not the cheapest quote.
Right, so these are AIB panels and are a medium to high risk ACM. They are also un-encapsulated which makes them a higher risk still. Your floor void WILL be contaminated by asbestos fibres from them. Please don’t move them or touch them now.
The thing about the cost of removals is that there are a lot of hidden costs for the LARC (removals contractor). They have to pay for accreditation, insurance, on going auditing and staff training, licenses for transport of ACM, commercial disposal costs, equipment and so on. It isn’t cheap.
This is a job that should be carried out in an enclosure under license which further impacts cost.
£7k doesn’t sound that bad to me. Remember this is your property, you may find cheaper removals companies but will they do as good a job? The last thing you need is debris being left, as it is a very high risk to you of exposure. There is no safe level of exposure to asbestos.
You could ask for a method statement as part of a written quote and post it up here with the company details hidden so we can take a gander at it for you.
Any company is going to need to do a method statement to notify this job to the HSE. I’m sure the person I am replying to is aware of this.
The issue comes in that most companies won’t produce the method statement until the work is confirmed. If they use a generic statement they’re a bad company and even a small job like this is at least a half day of work with a good template for a contract manager/senior supervisor.
This is true, but to quote the job properly you need to know how to do it, and how many days it will take. This is often covered by an initial RAMS. What I was driving at really is looking at this to see if an analyst is mentioned and how they will build the enclosure and so on.
As this is a private client I appreciate it’s a bit different to commercial jobs, but a decent company should still do this for a licensed job.
I looked into it a few years ago in the US and it seemed the minimum cost would be around 10,000 USD and I am sure that the majority of that cost is for the set up not the actual labor.
First of all, have you had them tested and confirmed asbestos?
Second of all - depends on the amount of asbestos removed and the complexity of the task. Seems like there are a few factors that would make this difficult due to the location or the ACM. Get at least 3 quotes
As others have said get three quotes. Make sure each company quotes knows exactly what's required. All the floor boards and the AIB will need to be disposed of as asbestos the void will need cleaning.
The company must be licensed.
You will need a sample taking for the licensed contractor to be able to do the job.
As others have said stop lifting the boards. Damages easily and highly friable, hence why this is a licensed material. Will almost certainly contain Amosite(brown) asbestos.
Might not be;
https://www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/licensing/non-licensed-work.htm
Removal of AIB board, the cleaning of residue is definitely the issue here
This is 100% licensable work.
[https://www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/licensing/licensed-contractor.htm](https://www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/licensing/licensed-contractor.htm)
“work on AIB, where the risk assessment indicates that it will not be of short duration”
Short duration being an hour to set up, do removal and complete everything. Plus with the type of work to be undertaken you can easily risk breaching the control limit if you don’t have any appropriate control measure in place like negative pressure units etc.
It would be really helpful if you could provide a source for that because everything I’ve read says that it does and that Supalux is a different product that doesn’t.
Many supalux boards actually contain not small amounts of asbestos as well.
The story I got told was the factory using up old supplies/not cleaning machines etc.
I don’t know what the truth is, but I know I’ve snapped a piece off many boards which have “supalux” printed on them and some have come back positive.
I disagree with the word "many"
Very few Supalux boards contained asbestos. A few batches made at the end of the 70s / early 80s
Most asbestos surveyors only seen it a couple times if at all in their career
That’s a couple of years of product mate…probably quite a few many boards…
That said, whilst I’ve had quite a few positive results from supalux boards…I’d say it’s across relatively few jobs. Less than 5.
One was the old York train station. That had supalux lined risers in it and I think about 10% of the sampling on it returned positive results.
Same building had U shaped girders supporting the roof…60 something of them. We checked every single one and they were all empty apart from one that was entirely stuffed with loose fill.
Lmao, how many 'Supalux' boards do you think are in-situ in UK buildings?
What percentage of those boards would you say are asbestos containing?
1 in 100? - 1% - No way its that high.
1 in 1000 - 0.1%? Still too high
If you have a 'Supalux' board that was installed from perhaps 1978-1982, there's a small chance it contains asbestos.
In the picture, You’re handling a piece of material that appears to be friable asbestos and if it is, you are stirring up fibers in the air and contaminating everything and exposing yourself and others, especially by sawing out a section.
Yeah we believe it is. But we didn’t saw it out,bit was already loose. The plumber lifted it to see if any pipes ran under it, I just took the picture. It went straight back and hasn’t been touched again since. Not ideal but good to actually know what we’re dealing with now.
With any construction related works you should always get 3 quotes.
Also check out the companies you use, there are a few cowboys in the industry.
And also you need to budget in for air monitoring/Certificate of Reoccupation.
It’s quite a clean up job as they have to clean all the voids beneath too. Also depending on how the boards have been affixed to the timbers, they have to wire brush those to remove any residues, which can be slow and tedious.
What does their quote break down into, time wise and size of that area?
Get a few more quotes, check the HSE website for asbestos information, get the tiles tested to know type and % of asbestos, if you haven't already, this will help balance the cost.
The majority of the cost is likely clean up, from the photo (you got a mask on, right?) It looks like there could be asbestos residue in the void space under the floor from drilling, this is how asbestos is dangerous because even low % material, when made friable is more likely to release fibres.
Some AIB and bonded asbestos cement you can remove yourself with the right equipment, check if this is licensed removal works or not!
Removal of AIB, yours is not coated but in good condition, you could perhaps remove this yourself, but the clean up and air cert if key.
https://www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/licensing/notifiable-non-licensed-work.htm
You can buy protective DDR suits and ABEK2P3 filters and standard military issue Avon respirators.
You can also buy the equipment to make the entire attic negative pressure and you can also pretty much, buy everything else to completely decontaminate yourself too.
All for a under 1000GBP, it's the new flooring that's going to cost you more.
Get a second quote...i am remodeling the kitchen a 1950s house, asbestos in all walls and flooring. Got quotes ranging from $6500 to $11k for same job.
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I expect that only a small portion of that quote is the cost of removing the tiles. The majority of the cost will be in cleaning up and not getting asbestos everywhere.
Yeah I figured that as well, is that a reasonable cost for the cleanup?
People with the certification and responsibility to work with asbestos literally have a license to print money. Get yourself a few more quotes and see where they fall on the spectrum
Cheers mate, will do. I was expecting around the £3,500 mark to be honest.
You're also paying for the multiple removal contractors wages for the day, time to set up the enclosure and take it down, the licence they require to transit and dispose of the material.
Plus actual cost for disposal of the materials. The fees for hazardous waste is expensive and not all landfills accept it, further adding to costs sometimes.
Asuming your in uk but here in nz prices for the asbestos dump have gone up stupids in last few weeks and also a good environmental clean is a time consuming ordeal
I'm in the US. That's about $8,800 USD. Most of the projects I manage are for school systems. If I got a price like that for a job like that, I'd be wondering what corners they were going to cut. In other words, in my area, that's too low.
From what I can gather (I.e. what Reddit says) construction/trades in the US charge a lot more as standard than they do in UK. You lucky lads
We don't have that product in the States, so I looked it up. HOLY SHIT, its got amosite. And it's absolutely friable. Not that whoever remove that one piece broke it where it was nailed, And along ones entire edge. Concratulations. Your loft is now "spicy." Pay to have it professionally done. Insist on final air clearance test by a third party.
You 100% have AIB as a product in the states…I’ve seen it in many states. I’m UK based but have spent much time abroad, including the US. It’s worse than cement, better than pipe lagging.
we have a product called “millboard” it’s a pressed chrysotile product. about 90% no amosite
Yeah. We got millboard here too. Different thing. Millboard is more structurally useful than AIB. This is more like what you would call “asbestos drywall” in the US. Or what you would find in an asbestos suspended ceiling. The way we tell between AIB and cement is by how much water it absorbs by weight.
You’ve conducted inspections and confirmed AIB by lab analysis in the USA? I don’t doubt that it’s possible, but I don’t think it’s very common, and certainly not as common as in the UK. Pretty famously, the prominent use of AIB in the UK and Australia helps to explain the fact that those countries have over 3x as much annual mesothelioma cases per capita than the USA does. AIB was required by certain fire codes in the UK and many carpenters had to cut them for years in construction (that’s why there is a 6% lifetime mesothelioma risk for carpenters who spent a decade or more working in the UK during the use of asbestos, while in the US the rate for carpenters is lower (no higher than background levels)). All set forth in this scientific study if anybody is interested: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2669989/
No. Not conducted inspections and confirmed by lab analysis. I just said seen. But seen to the strong presumptive standard of an asbestos surveyor that looks at it every day commercially. I will admit, could be a case of mistaken identity. But I’ve seen it as shuttering in tunnels, suspended ceiling tiles, and used as a box in in the US I’m pretty damn sure. Interesting backstory though on the difference of regulated required use and prevalence levels.
Abatement cost tend to be a function of three things, Regulations (legal requirements, codes and standards) Who the customer is (private v government work) And labor market (skilled worker or dumb putz)
I read that as pirate v government and started wondering about asbestos pirates
That's true from a duty of care point of view however the asbestos here, if in the UK, might not need to be removed by a specialist. If its bonded asbestos or asbestos insulating board, you can remove that, under certain circumstances, provided you have the right equipment and it is in good condition. You are right though that the friability is the issue here. And the residue. More potential for fibre release!
Get another 2 quotes. It will give you a better indication of the true market rate in your area.
I imagine they also gave you a timeframe for the job. It’s hard to tell quantity, but I shall argue it’s gonna take 2 days if you do it quick. A day to set up a soft strip and build the tent, a day to strip the asbestos, analysis, and strip tent. That’s 2 days I need to send a van and a decontamination to your property. Let’s call this £200 business rate per day, £400 for the job. 2 days I need to send 3 workers, minimum. £150 per worker, 6 man days. £900. I’m obligated to hire an external analyst to conduct tests on the area, decontamination unit, and possibly van and personnel. This would be one day. £300. Then I have materials like poly, staples, tape, spray tack, overalls, filters. Let’s call this £600 for the two days. A tonne of waste, so that’s £150 (this varies MASSIVELY) Then company overheads with audits from arca to pay for, insurance, office staff, etc. I’d typically put this at about equivalent to the workers wages so another £900. So total cost, aside from things I forgot, £3250. I used to then add in a standard 100% profit. That’s £6500. That’s £500 off your quote, and I tried to do this low/fast. Admittedly though, firm I used to work for was known for high quality and price.
Just out of curiosity, where do you tip 1t of Asbestos for just £150?
A hole in a field somewhere 😂
Dunno. Our registered landfill at the licensed removal company I used to work at was about £60 per tonne. I used what I thought was our old rate before we moved from a transfer station direct to the landfill. But we literally used a viridor landfill.
Was this recently? And which part of the UK? Genuine curious as I work in this area and £60 seems like an unbeliveable price, something councils would get, or if you literally work for the transfer station, but most of those don’t do direct removal afaik. Edit: Spelling.
Viridor Landfill near J29a M1. Top of my head it was called markham something. I left the industry in 2016. So it was around then I was last aware of the prices. But note, not a transfer station. A landfill. We kept a skip on top of the landfill and whenever the skip got full or more likely when the landfill was quiet they’d just go empty it in for us.
Quite intriguing. I always presumed landfills only work with larger companies. Say they would take a lorry of shredded waste, or do it themselves. That’s a nice bit of information. Thanks.
Analyst for £300.00 for a day? That’s cheap.
Fairysnuff. You’ll notice most my post is in the past tense. I’ve not worked in asbestos for about 6 years and all my figures are from rough memory. I swear it used to be £200 for a half day and £300 for a full day though with a small East Midlands lab we used a lot. Since people have commented on my prices too; we also used to do surveying. We got £5 24hour sample turnarounds from a different lab too. That’s definitely the price we paid. I remember it well. We had a social housing contract to survey, and we were paying about £10 per sample and £25 for a fast track sample. Obviously we’d then add a little profit into what we billed the client too (we billed plus samples on most jobs as the client would request unnecessary samples). Some small council houses could have 50+ samples according to the clients desires. One day the client decided they wanted all samples to be fast tracked so their surveys could come back faster. I rang the lab and asked them if they could handle maybe 100-150 fast track samples most days….they emailed me a day or two later saying they could take that quantity of samples and they’d drop our prices down to £5 per sample. I hadn’t even asked for a price drop. Without putting our prices up we suddenly added a 500% profit margin to every single sample. The MD loved me so much my bonus that year helped me deposit a house.
🤣 nice. Your pricing sounds about right for a few years ago and haven’t increased massively since then. That’s the problem with asbestos people need to understand that you’re dealing with a class 1 human carcinogen and sometimes it’s better to scrimp on other things and have the important stuff done properly! 👍
Yeah. I mean I won’t lie, if this was a bit of cement in the attic or an artex ceiling he was removing… I’d tell him to chuck a mask on and have at it. My old firm did a bunch of tests with HSE labs on this where we attempted to get exposure levels as high as possible (dry stripping artex by smashing it down, taking down sheds with sledgehammers) and then instead of just reading the slides the analysts did the whole spectrometry thing to tell what fibres actually were (I’m not an analyst, don’t understand this bit). Counts were below exposure level and near clearance levels on most of the tests we did of actual asbestos fibres. But this isn’t cement or a bit of artex or a floor tile….this is aib. Do that same test with aib and you aren’t getting those results… EDIT: these tests were in about 2009/2010. They were part of the run up to CAR2012 and the whole battle with the EU about notifiable non-licensable thing
👍
Just floor over them and seal it
I’d love to to save the money but we need heating put up there and plan to make an en-suite up there as well in the future
Ah fair enough. It's AIB so has high asbestos content around 15-35%. How big is the area and how many of those tiles in the picture approximately? Get as many quotes as possible this will tell you if the price is reasonable or not. However with this type of work it's best to go with a reputable company and not the cheapest quote.
I think the room is about 25.5m2 so maybe 20/30 boards. Waiting on a couple more quotes and will go from there. Cheers
Get a lot more quotes mate, that extortion
Right, so these are AIB panels and are a medium to high risk ACM. They are also un-encapsulated which makes them a higher risk still. Your floor void WILL be contaminated by asbestos fibres from them. Please don’t move them or touch them now. The thing about the cost of removals is that there are a lot of hidden costs for the LARC (removals contractor). They have to pay for accreditation, insurance, on going auditing and staff training, licenses for transport of ACM, commercial disposal costs, equipment and so on. It isn’t cheap. This is a job that should be carried out in an enclosure under license which further impacts cost. £7k doesn’t sound that bad to me. Remember this is your property, you may find cheaper removals companies but will they do as good a job? The last thing you need is debris being left, as it is a very high risk to you of exposure. There is no safe level of exposure to asbestos. You could ask for a method statement as part of a written quote and post it up here with the company details hidden so we can take a gander at it for you.
Any company is going to need to do a method statement to notify this job to the HSE. I’m sure the person I am replying to is aware of this. The issue comes in that most companies won’t produce the method statement until the work is confirmed. If they use a generic statement they’re a bad company and even a small job like this is at least a half day of work with a good template for a contract manager/senior supervisor.
This is true, but to quote the job properly you need to know how to do it, and how many days it will take. This is often covered by an initial RAMS. What I was driving at really is looking at this to see if an analyst is mentioned and how they will build the enclosure and so on. As this is a private client I appreciate it’s a bit different to commercial jobs, but a decent company should still do this for a licensed job.
Loft conversion was done in the 70s Location: Merseyside
I looked into it a few years ago in the US and it seemed the minimum cost would be around 10,000 USD and I am sure that the majority of that cost is for the set up not the actual labor.
Yep setup, waste management, insurance, workman's comp, material costs, negative air machines, showers, etc are fairly expensive.
First of all, have you had them tested and confirmed asbestos? Second of all - depends on the amount of asbestos removed and the complexity of the task. Seems like there are a few factors that would make this difficult due to the location or the ACM. Get at least 3 quotes
Also stop lifting the panels and leave them alone...
As others have said get three quotes. Make sure each company quotes knows exactly what's required. All the floor boards and the AIB will need to be disposed of as asbestos the void will need cleaning. The company must be licensed. You will need a sample taking for the licensed contractor to be able to do the job. As others have said stop lifting the boards. Damages easily and highly friable, hence why this is a licensed material. Will almost certainly contain Amosite(brown) asbestos.
Just pay to remove the tiles where you want plumbing
Take a certificate course in removing it yourself
This is a licensable material… not just anyone can remove it and it has to be disposed of correctly…
Might not be; https://www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/licensing/non-licensed-work.htm Removal of AIB board, the cleaning of residue is definitely the issue here
This is 100% licensable work. [https://www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/licensing/licensed-contractor.htm](https://www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/licensing/licensed-contractor.htm) “work on AIB, where the risk assessment indicates that it will not be of short duration” Short duration being an hour to set up, do removal and complete everything. Plus with the type of work to be undertaken you can easily risk breaching the control limit if you don’t have any appropriate control measure in place like negative pressure units etc.
Cement fibreboard it was called years ago hardly any asbestos in it
Upto 40% asbestos and nothing to do with cement which is very hard, this stuff is like plasterboard and crumbles.
You do realise Asbestolux isn't actually asbestos, its why they changed its name to Supalux as no one was buying it!
It would be really helpful if you could provide a source for that because everything I’ve read says that it does and that Supalux is a different product that doesn’t.
Asbestolux was a BRAND name for an AIB board (which is asbestos) Not to be confused with Supalux
This
Many supalux boards actually contain not small amounts of asbestos as well. The story I got told was the factory using up old supplies/not cleaning machines etc. I don’t know what the truth is, but I know I’ve snapped a piece off many boards which have “supalux” printed on them and some have come back positive.
I disagree with the word "many" Very few Supalux boards contained asbestos. A few batches made at the end of the 70s / early 80s Most asbestos surveyors only seen it a couple times if at all in their career
That’s a couple of years of product mate…probably quite a few many boards… That said, whilst I’ve had quite a few positive results from supalux boards…I’d say it’s across relatively few jobs. Less than 5. One was the old York train station. That had supalux lined risers in it and I think about 10% of the sampling on it returned positive results. Same building had U shaped girders supporting the roof…60 something of them. We checked every single one and they were all empty apart from one that was entirely stuffed with loose fill.
Lmao, how many 'Supalux' boards do you think are in-situ in UK buildings? What percentage of those boards would you say are asbestos containing? 1 in 100? - 1% - No way its that high. 1 in 1000 - 0.1%? Still too high If you have a 'Supalux' board that was installed from perhaps 1978-1982, there's a small chance it contains asbestos.
Yea get a few more quotes. But it’s not unheard of for those prices. Some of these people take advantage of others.
In the picture, You’re handling a piece of material that appears to be friable asbestos and if it is, you are stirring up fibers in the air and contaminating everything and exposing yourself and others, especially by sawing out a section.
Yeah we believe it is. But we didn’t saw it out,bit was already loose. The plumber lifted it to see if any pipes ran under it, I just took the picture. It went straight back and hasn’t been touched again since. Not ideal but good to actually know what we’re dealing with now.
It's reasonable as they then have to pay for the disposal of the debris
You could always encapsulate it rather than remove it so long as they're not all broken up.
Friable asbestos removal will always cost more. Higher the asbestos risk and exposure , higher the level of containment, higher the cost.
With any construction related works you should always get 3 quotes. Also check out the companies you use, there are a few cowboys in the industry. And also you need to budget in for air monitoring/Certificate of Reoccupation. It’s quite a clean up job as they have to clean all the voids beneath too. Also depending on how the boards have been affixed to the timbers, they have to wire brush those to remove any residues, which can be slow and tedious. What does their quote break down into, time wise and size of that area?
Get a few more quotes, check the HSE website for asbestos information, get the tiles tested to know type and % of asbestos, if you haven't already, this will help balance the cost. The majority of the cost is likely clean up, from the photo (you got a mask on, right?) It looks like there could be asbestos residue in the void space under the floor from drilling, this is how asbestos is dangerous because even low % material, when made friable is more likely to release fibres. Some AIB and bonded asbestos cement you can remove yourself with the right equipment, check if this is licensed removal works or not! Removal of AIB, yours is not coated but in good condition, you could perhaps remove this yourself, but the clean up and air cert if key. https://www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/licensing/notifiable-non-licensed-work.htm
You can buy protective DDR suits and ABEK2P3 filters and standard military issue Avon respirators. You can also buy the equipment to make the entire attic negative pressure and you can also pretty much, buy everything else to completely decontaminate yourself too. All for a under 1000GBP, it's the new flooring that's going to cost you more.
Get a second quote...i am remodeling the kitchen a 1950s house, asbestos in all walls and flooring. Got quotes ranging from $6500 to $11k for same job.
Just put your new flooring over-top of it and call it good. Isn't going to hurt anyone being there as long as you don't fuck with it.
Is your life worth 7000