How to tell if a fence is asbestos

[Grov]

Hi everyone,

I have a fence (well actually a neighbours) that is the corrugated grey / white sheet material that has reached the end of its life - the concrete posts have crumbled and the wooden cross beams are all but rotted away.

The plan was for me to help the neighbour replace the fence, but they have now decided to also get a quote from "professional". Now after nuch sucking of teeth the "professional" has declared that the fence is asbestos that requires professional removal, full chemical suits and "is going to be expensive".

Now, I might be wrong, but I thought that this type of panel was not necessarily asbestos based and that it would need testing to confirm this? Secondly, as the panels are not disintegrating in any way, is it safe to carefully remove "DIY" and if so what precautions should be taken and how should it e disposed of?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Paul

[Lobster]

Google the archives of this newsgroup with "asbestos" for all you never wanted to know about this issue - it's been raised many times!

I think the only *definitive* way to tell whether it's the dangerous type is to get a bloke in a space suit to come round and take samples though.

David

[Phil L]

If it's not your fence, the best thing you can do now is to have nothing to do with it at all - it's going to cost a lot of money and you might get roped into paying half if it's a dividing fence.

It's usually a pile of bollocks when people are told this, those paper suits are about £2 and respirators are about £15, have a guess who's inside it? - you've got it, the builder's mate / brother / dad and the crap is carted away and placed in a skip which costs about £100....if it is the real deal (which it almost certainly is not) the genuine asbestos removal people are pretty much the same - scaremongerers who want a pile of cash for nothing....if it was mine I would order a skip, (and buy a respirator and paper suit) then place the sheets on the bottom and cover the lot up with bushes, earth, rubble, bricks etc, whichever way you go, the 'asbestos' will end up in the same place - in a skip.

[zikkimalambo]

And then The Doctor will zap it with his sonic screwdriver so it disappears??

What do you think happens to the contnts of skips?

They are emptied and sorted, and if the skip owner finds you have been hiding potentially dangerous stuff in his skip, he's not going to be very happy - and there will probably be a clause in the skip hire contract which states that the price you pay is just for hardcore/soil etc, and if anything else is found then you get billed. Of course, you don't have to pay, but a lot of these characters prefer to use a length of lead piping rather than a solicitors letter!

Don't be a plonker!

[manatbandq]

No, you should double wrap it in polythene and take it to your local "recycling" centre. Or find the nearest one that will take it in this form.

MBQ

[John]

The contents of skips [loaded with building rubble etc.] are *sorted*? I thought they were just tipped, in a tip. Along with hundreds of other such skips. Every day.

Eee ... how things have come on since I were a lad!

Just thought: I've found my perfect post-retirement job: skip sorting: we can get *paid* for it lads!

John

[Guy King]

The message from [e-mail] contains these words:

Check your local council's website - Telfords, for example has this...

Which, as they're supposed to, allows small non-commercial disposal subject to fairly simple conditions.

[Lobster]

I don't believe anyone's going to 'sort' a rubble skip; but you may find somebody official standing watching as it's emptied to check there's nothing obviously in there which shouldn't be (like, er, asbestos). And if asbestos turned up, I imagine they'd be down on the skip owner like a ton of bricks.

How about a binbag sorter, then? Apparently my local council now employ people to do this... as we are just going over to wheelie bins/recycling boxes etc, we've applied for a Large Wheelie Bin as our family size fulfils the criteria for this: so apparently fot at least a month we are going to have the contents of our binbags gone through with a fine toothcomb to check there's nothing in there which should be in a different container. Mm, nice work if you can get it...

David

[manatbandq]

A hired a skip a few years ago and was asked what it was for and then asked to put the aluminium and glass remains of a conservatory in last so it could be sorted. There may have been some scrap value in the ali, I don't know.

MBQ

[Tony Bryer]

Tis true - an intended effect of landfill tax.

[Lobster]

But surely nobody 'sorts' a skip of rubble? AIUI the knock-on effect of landfill tax is that there are now different skips for different types of rubbish, which have different tariffs at the tip. Certainly my preferred skip operator asks what I'm going to put in a skip, and by telling him "builder's rubble" or whatever, I get a price from him which beats the competition (who give a flat rate regardless of skip content).

David

[Grov]

Thanks all, seems local council site will take it if bagged correctly at no charge even though they make no mention of this on their web site.

Regards, Paul

[gort]

Live in Worcester by any chance ?

Dave