Cost of Asbestos Removal

On Mon, 9 Feb 2004 23:26:32 -0000, "David Rose"
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Asbestos cement sheeting was commonly used for wall covering in place of plaster in the 30's.
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A local school of similar vintage had a wall about 20ft long and 8-9ft high covered on one side by these sheets which had to be removed when rebuilding was going on. Although the Asbestos (Licensing) Regulations 1983 do _not_ require the use of licensed contractors to carry out work on asbestos cement the local authority have a policy of always using them on all asbestos products.
The bill was over £7,000. The "professional" licensed asbestos scammer doing it went ballistic when he discovered I'd sprayed it all with fluorescein dye the day before he took it out so we could identify it if it was illegally dumped. People did wonder why he was so annoyed.
You might like to look at http://www.asbestoswatchdog.co.uk/need.html

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On the positive side, we're about to have all the white asbestos cement ceilings in our 1930s house removed. The man from the council came around (his card says Buildings Maintenance but we contacted Environmental Health IIRC) and quoted us £15 per "wrap" to remove the stuff, so long as we arranged for it to be stacked outside ready for his men. He reckoned that a 3 by 5m ceiling (one of the rooms) would take about 3 "wraps" if that's any help. I suppose that equates to roughly 5sqm per wrap, but it depends whether we manage to get the stuff out in largeish chunks / sheets or whether it breaks into little bits.
He was quite confident we could remove it ourselves, with disposable overalls, masks and some common sense. We're in the middle of a huge renovation project, so we're quite happy to scrap carpets rather than going to great lengths with dust sheets and so on.
Commercial companies seem to be charging £450 or so for a skip, no matter how full you can fill it, and don't even think about asking them to remove the stuff, that's when you start talking about bills of thousands. Originally we were only looking at removing one or two ceilings, but the idea of sending out a nine-tenths empty skip grated. The council is willing to charge for part-skips because it is able to fill the skip elsewhere on the same day.
Do get the stuff checked first though. A proper test will cost, but we struck lucky - our council man had worked on another identical house just up the road a few years previously and was able to say with some confidence what we had. The whole row is ex-council, by the way.
HTH
Hwyl!
M.