We have a small back porch seperated from the kitchen by a door that I am dry lining. In the process of taking the ceiling plaster board off last night I found it was screwed into a thin (5mm) asbestos sheet, about 1.5 m square. Having found this I shut the door into the kitchen and taped around the edge whilst leaving the back door open for ventilation. With a P2 mask on I pulled it all down in the biggest chunks I could wihlst wetting it down in the process to minimise dust. After double bagging the waste I swept, hoovered (bag disposed of on completion) and washed down the entire area before hosing myself down in the garden and chucking the old clothes I was wearing.
Is there anything more I should do or am I worrying too much?
I'd have just re-boarded over the top and sealed the edges, tbh.
I would have done but I need to get up there and insulate to aid in curing a damp problem.
Is it not a bit late to be asking such questions?
Do you mean asbestos cement sheet or some other kind of sheet - if you mean cement I'd have thought you'd be fine. not that i have any real knowledge, just that I've been told the stuff in cement is super tightly bonded to the cmemnt
😯
Is there anything more I should do or am I worrying too much?
Move house? I think you may have gone a little overboard there.
Edit: how do you know it had asbestos in it?
horse, stable, door, bolted.
It does seem a little after the fact, TBH.
You'll know if you've had an issue in several years' time. The only other issue (apart from long term health and exposure of others to any released fibres) will be disposal - don't dump it at the bottom of the skip....
several years' time
Round about 40, so you might not have any problems if you are late 40's. #grimreaper
You had the wrong mask on for a start. P2 isn't adequate for asbestos fibres. P3 is the required filter.
Chuck your hoover away. In the asbestos skip. If this was board rather than cement you have ****ed up royally.
I'd agree on the hoover - no way the paper the bag's made from will have captured all the fibres and they'll now be right through the tubes running into the machine, inside the machine and also be blown out the hoover exhaust into a fine cloud that will have settled all over the porch and surrounding area.
Using a P2 mask for asbestos protection is like using a seive to catch rain. Utterly pointless.
plus 3 on the hoover actually. Pretty sure the advice is hoovering with a non-asbestos-certified hoover is the worst thing you can do.
First of all like everyone else gas said you had the wrong mask.
Secondly if it was a board and not cement all of the exposed surfaces including the timbers you removed it from will be contaminated. You will just keep exposing yourself when you work in the area.
When AIB (asbestos board) is removed, the nails have to be removed, the holes drilled out and the timbers wire brushed to remove residue and fibres. This is all done under fully controlled condition with a decontamination facility on site.
If its cement your probably be O.K just learn from it.
And if it is board it cant just be taken down the tip.
I am an asbestos consultant please let me know if you would like some free advice.
I had an insulation board lined garage ceiling - from what I read up it is some of the worst stuff (sheds loads of fibres when broken) and cost a lot to get it removed by the best company I could find. I'd no issue with the cost as the guys were VERY thorough and methodical, airlocks, negative pressure ventilation etc. As said above - they were fretting over how to access and remove one last nail because the independent guy that signs off their work and the air quality would have pulled them up on it.
mick r
I am that independent guy that signs their work off.
If we find so much as a cobweb in an enclosure the job gets failed and they have to re clean the whole area.
And NEVER EVER under any circumstances sweep or hoover up asbestos. (with a normal hoover)
It has to be hoovered up with a H-Type vacuum cleaner. This has a HEPA filter built into it so it doesn't just spit the fibres back out like a normal vac would.
Gunz has gone awkwardly quiet 😯
So have I. In my youth myself and mates fell through climbed back out of many a garage roof! Hey ho spilt milk and all that 54 and still going strongish.
Submit a sample to a lab for analysis. There's a fair chance that your "asbestos" is a look-alike in which case happy days
Even the experts have to use a lab to tell what they're dealing with
Get an expert in if necessary
I remember when I was a kid ....we used to find loads of asbestos in the horses fields ......we used to be fascinated that when you put chunks on a fire ...it explodes!!....
So we used to make loads of fires to do this.
Then during my YTS years....the builder I was working for at the time used to have me and my workmate ripping off asbestos garage roofs and what nots......without any safety equipment
If only I knew then , what I know now.....!!.....dangerous stuff.."....
Touch wood ...it don't come back to bite me in the ass!!
brocks- there's a world of difference between cement and board products, which is why ones licensable and the other isn't.
Gunz - if you are in the South West I'd be happy to test it in my lab for you.
Back again, apologies for the silence as I had to spend the rest of the day out of the office.
Believe me if I'd had the choice I would have left well alone but pulling down the plasterboard snapped the asbestos sheet that was hidden behind it so I had to crack on.
Sammaratti I do live in the south west (near Launceston). I'm away this weekend but if I could mail you next week for a chat that would be much appreciated.
Edit: I couldn't find your mail in your profile, if you could drop me a line to the one in mine, I'll get back to you, cheers.
Aussie government aren't quite as soon and gloom about P2 level protection as the naysayers on here are;
That Aussie advice is pretty much how I did it and my local builder has been a bit more encouraging about the precautions I took. I'll continue to attempt contact with Sammaratti for reassurance, thanks for all the replies folks.
Except for that advice is for cement and you might have been working on board and you used a hoover, which it specifically says you shouldn't.
Don't mean to be A-hole about it but the implications for you or anyone else stumbling across this thread and using it as guidance might be serious
Sorry busy day.
Ill forward my email address now.
We provide a lot of asbestos awareness courses to builders and trades people alike and it does seem to be a bit of an eye opener to some of them.
It seems to go one of two ways when they first come to us, either their scared to death of the stuff or couldn't care less about it and then proceed to share there horror stories with us.