hi room , ive just bought a load of laminate flooring to do the spare bedroom, was checking up on other well known sites for hints and tips before i make a start ( bearing in mind the toe)
anyway after a bit of research discovers the tiles on the floor contain asbestos, they are 9" square and look like vinyl or linolium
SWMBO is going a bit primate now, dont know what to do apart from ring the council monday
need to calm the ape down asap any advice? cheers
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For one thing there's asbestos and asbestos. Depends which colour you've got. For another, anything squeezed and processed into something like lino squares isn't going to be releasing a lot of breathable fibres, is it?
Sounds like nothing to worry about.
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Belt and braces and holding your breeks up by hand just in case are thought the prudent approaches with anything potentially nasty. Carpet or insulating wool stuff are one thing, lino is another. One releases fibres and dust, the other doesn't.
What you don't want to do is breathe blue or brown asbestos fibres. Best to avoid breathing any dust if you can.
There are sixties tower blocks still full of the stuff.
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Seconded the bit about types of asbestos.
I'm struggling to think of the type of tile that contains asbestos, but apart from the various types of asbestos, things that contain it do so in different ways. Probably the worst way would be pipe lagging, and one of the best ways would be akin to a cement with asbestos one of the ingredients.
Garage roofing of the 60's was the latter, and although it would probably not be the case these days, the local household recycling place accepted a number of sheets of concrete asbestos from me. I had to take it when they said - but they rang me when they were ready, and 20 minutes later, I was loading the stuff in their designated bin. Along with the old clothes I wore whilst removing them.
Got a link to the types of tiles you've got?
Last edited by: Slidingpillar on Sat 19 Jul 14 at 08:48
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One of our old shops had asbestos in the floor tiles but it had long been carpeted over.
Problem was that the carpet had been glued down which meant that removing the carpet was sure to disturb the tiles!
As laminate doesnt need nailed or glued I would be tempted just to lay on top of the tiles.
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Our barn (sounds grander than it is) has asbestos corrugated cement roofing.
Various building type people people have looked at it over the years and said "just leave it mate", including buildings inspector from council.
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Bit of a generalisation, but not disturbing asbestos can have legitimacy as a means of dealing with it.
The boss is a school governor, and only a week ago was doing an inspection of the known asbestos-containing bits of the school to make sure it's not going anywhere.
Nasty stuff though. Along with the rest of the third (IIRC) form, I had a tour of BBA Mintex in about 1966 - 120 or so children breathing the dust! The people who worked there of course did it everyday. As it can take only one exposure to cause cancer, I often wonder how many pupils might have been affected over the years, the trip being an annual event.
My aunt's uncle (easier than working out what relation he was to me) worked there. He died of mesothelioma. His widow continued to live in the house they had been in for their whole married life I think, in a street adjacent to the factory. About 20 years ago she had to move out, along with all the neighbours, when somebody brought the council's attention to the fact that the common roof space was thick with asbestos dust.
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Eternit cladding was very popular here back in the 60's on all the wooden houses. Mine still has it, and the general rule is to go over it with whatever you want, or better still just leave it and paint it, as it's one of the best and long lasting materials. Many posh people on the coast ripped it off their summer houses, and now spend every summer repainting the replacement wood facade.
The advice for asbestos roof tiles is again to go over with something new, although they do say you shouldn't make new holes for nails and screws, but use existing ones. Not sure how that would work in practice.
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Best left in-situ and laminate over.
Artex, pre 1984 contains asbestos by the way.
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I've recently encountered this. I removed some Marley tiles from a screeded floor and read up on them after the event. Apparently, where Marley tiles are concerned, if they're brittle, they contain asbestos, whereas if they're pliable, they don't. Mine were brittle, but I'm not too worried. I lifted them with a wide paint scraper and most of them came up easily in one piece.
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asbestos floor tiles - Lygonos
