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What Preparation Is Required For Asbestos Abatement?

Making sure asbestos-containing materials are actually present is the first step. Unfortunately, asbestos cannot be seen with the naked eye. Some states require a professional inspection by a federally certified inspector before any demolition of an area that is suspected to have asbestos-containing materials (ACMs). These requirements may be less stringent for homeowners working on their own residences than they are for public buildings, but they are not at all a bad idea. After all, your family's best protection comes from knowing what you're dealing with and handling it responsibly.

Many states also require that a property owner file formal written notice as much as ten business days before any demolition is started. The forms used for these notifications list what ACMs will be affected (even if there are no ACMs on the property) and how they will be handled. That is, if your state or local authorities require this kind of notice. Before work can begin, some states need to have proof of whether or not ACMs exist (which pretty much calls for a professional inspection). Clearly stating how workers will protect themselves from asbestos and how the release of asbestos into the community will be prevented is also necessary.

Renovations may require notification for only certain amounts of asbestos-containing materials. A professional inspection is still the best way to be prepared to show your project is covered under the regulation's threshold. You may have to pay a fee with these notices, and the fee may also depend on the amount of asbestos being removed.

Any work area where asbestos is being disturbed should be isolated from the rest of the house by shutting down ventilation systems (this includes sealing them) and lining windows and doors with plastic sheeting and duct tape. Contractors should have at least three people to perform a room-sized removal. Two to be active inside the containment area and one should stay at the door to hand in tools and supplies without coming in.

The next preparatory step in the removal of asbestos-containing material is to wet the material down. This is the primary means of controlling the generation of dust that may contain asbestos fibers. These fibers can hang in the air for days or weeks after everything else has settled to the floor. How to go about wetting the material depends on the material being worked on. Rarely does all of it need to be wet down at the same time.

For molded insulation on pipes, the recommended procedure is to saturate the outer surface (using water with a bit of detergent added to aid penetration) of a section of the material just enough that it keeps from falling all at once. Next, strip off the wet canvas coating, re-wet the surface in several stages, and then let the water soak in until the insulation is saturated all the way down. Any insulation being cut that might have broken edges will need to be wet down again. A contractor may even bring along a misting sprayer to keep the air in the area saturated with amended water to capture airborne asbestos fibers. A similar procedure is used to remove pipe insulation made of corrugated asbestos paper.

The thermal-block insulation used on boilers, hot water tanks, and heat exchangers calls for a different task. The blocks are commonly chalky in nature and may be held in place by chicken wire or expanded metal lath. For older homes, a plaster-saturated canvas was usually applied as a final covering or wrap and it is going to be nearly impossible to spray water through all of these layers. The task may require one person doing nothing but wetting successive layers as they're stripped or cut. It may be easiest to add another layer to encapsulate the asbestos-containing material and simply remove the entire unit.

Material that was sprayed or troweled on walls or ceilings, such as acoustical plaster or fireproofing, is a third kind of challenge. This material cannot be divided into sections. If you try to wet the whole thing, it may peel off and fall, raising uncontrollable dust. It is generally absorbent, so experienced contractors work on one small area at a time, wetting the material before, during, and after its removal. It may even require some experimentation to see how many sprayings it takes to get through the material, and how long it takes the water to penetrate after each one. This might seem a good place to use high-pressure water or steam, but these are also likely to bring down too much of the material before it is wet enough not to stir up dust.

Other asbestos-containing materials do not absorb water readily. This group includes asbestos-concrete products, roofing materials, and floor tiles. Here's another place where thorough preparation, a professional inspection, and laboratory analysis of your materials will be important to have. If the material has asbestos through and through, but the matrix (the concrete, asphalt, or vinyl) is sound and non-friable, only the surfaces being worked on will need to be wet. Floor tile with asbestos backing or with asbestos in the underlayment (also applies to roofing felt) or mastic can be wetted only as it's pried up. This makes the removal a more time-consuming process, and requires patience not to just rip and scrape as you might with other materials.

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