The new shop has a scruffy suspended ceiling, is there any reason why I can’t pop the panels out and scrub them, or give them a fresh lick of paint, maybe use an aerosol to get in the cracks as they are not dead flat?

Fire risk stuff?

I wonder how much new panels will cost?

If they are made of the same stuff thats in my shop they will turn to mush once they have been wet !

Not that expensive to buy

Charlie the new shop is an old factory or industrial unit isn’t it. Do you have an asbestos survey of the poperty as depending on the age it could have a few surprises. If you need to check jim swift on onecog is a specialst and I’ m sure he’d sort you out for lots of coffee and some stickers.

yeah you can pop them out and they do a proper spray for the job or just use a white aresol can, remember the one you take out put back in the same place, it should not matter in theroy but things do warp over time, or buy all new. its the grid thats expensive not so much the tiles

Personally I’d remove and put vinyl faced plasterboard ones in, really easy to keep clean. Biggest problem we have at work with the the regular tiles is when different trades come back to do some work in the void and leave grubby fingerprints all over them. Depending on the tile you can pick them up for just over a quid a tile.

Eeee…
Mul…..
Shon………

Vy….
Nil……
Matt……….

Cool, cheers chaps.
I will start with a. Hoover,
The spray paint,
Then once all this have failed… Just. Get new ones.

Asbestos…. The whole place as a new ish roof, only a few years old, so I reckon we should be safe. But will be cautious, cheers.

Lots of different types of tiles and the costs vary considerably.

The best technique is to mask up the lights and spray the whole ceiling and grid. Doing it yourself might be difficult though. Tiles cost from around £6-7 m2

What he said. Spray the whole ceiling incl. the grid. If you just spray the tiles you’ll notice how shifty the grid is.

I take it the tiles are 600 x 600mm…so 3 is approximately 1m2.

I’ve inadvertently left grubby finger marks over many a ceiling tile, I wasn’t so worried about one particular job after I watched an asbestos awareness video at work the following day and the asbestos tiles in it were exactly the same as the ones I’d removed 🙁 its a horrible, dusty and fiddly job at the best of times, and the dirt on the back of them always ends up on the front…

I’d recommend replacing if the grid is clean (easy to clean with kitchen cleaner). The vinyl face pb ones are great and easy to keep clean all our factory is done with these and they last longer and are easy to put holes in etc when you need to you can even hang light stuff from them! look on fleabay as a lot of “left over” stuff is on there from shop fits etc.

You may have insulation sitting on top of the tiles too, which makes it awkward and messy to remove them. Best to do what you can in-situ.

Anyway, who’s going to be looking at the ceiling when there’s a shop full of esoteric bling to gawk at? – oh, that’ll be the recumbent test then!

But thats the thing, if i went into a new shop and the fixtures and fitting looked shabby (yeah im that sad), i’d be concerned with the sort of people that i was dealing with. It is a reflection on your buisness especially when talking about a shop floor, dont go over the top but while you have the opportunity to get things right i’d say take it, you really dont want to be doing this when the shop is fully fitted out!