I have little DIY or painting/plastering knowledge, so maybe people here can help me..
Over the last couple of months a painter/decorator has been working in my property doing refurbishment, one day a week every couple of weeks. He skimmed half of a hallways with new plaster but the other half (which was coated in a textured paint) he took an electronic sander to. It took an age to sand out the rough bits of the wall, he would paint the sanded area then look for imperfections, then fill, then paint.
Something he said, almost at the end of this job, put terror into my heart. His words were 'when sanding, you could feel the sander hitting the artex, making the job very difficult'. I haven't seen him yet to clarify what 'hitting' means, but I assume if a sander hits artex, it sands, although he said something to suggest the sander wouldn't sand artex, that it kept stopping when it did?. Lots of dust was created from the sanding, although 80% of it was vacumned up at the end of the day, loads of it remained in the air for a while before settling, some getting on my possessions etc.
Looking at the walls, they retained their green colour even after sanding, so I assume what was being sanded was uneven pieces of plaster, lumps of paint and *possibly* traces of artex that was left over from what was an artex wall a long time ago.
I sent 4 samples to a testing company,
- dust that was vacumned up (not including dust in HEPA filter)
- dust on a railing (probably not original sanded dust though)
- Artex on wallpaper from behind Radiator
- A lump of artex from behind radiator (cracked a bit off after wetting)
The artex samples from behind the radiator both tested positive for white asbestos, but the vacumn cleaner dust and railing dust both tested negative.
After sending the samples, I remembered that two years prior I had cleaned behind the radiators with a crevice causing bits of artex to break off. I hoovered that up in the vacumn cleaner I still use now. I didn't know artex had asbestos in at the time.
I have being trying to think my way through this for a week and am now stuck. Options that are in my mind include
- Questioning the painter about what exactly was sanded.
- Sending off more samples for testing from different parts of the room and the hepa filter of the vacumn cleaner used to clean the dust.
- Cleaning every surface in the house with a wet cloth.
- Hiring a Type H Asbestos Vacumn cleaner and going through the house.
- After vacumning with Type H, disposing of carpets in affected areas (they are largely old and dirty, so this isn't a problem)
- Disposing of domestic vacumn cleaner.
I was hoping that the asbestos test would be definitive, but the man responsible for the testing suggested that vacumn cleaner dust may be too contaminated for any reliable result, and I don't think the railing sample was original sander dust. I have found more of the original sanding dust, so am wondering if more tests are in order, or whether I should just just hire the Type H vacumn cleaner and dispose of the domestic one used repeatedly for the sanding cleanup.
If you are knowledgeable in this area, please help.
-- Michael Mould