Asbestos Abatement Part 1: What to expect

Sometime last year 2015, my sister in-law's husband quickly pointed out that my steam pipes were wrapped in asbestos. I didn't really pay any mind because it was in good condition albeit a couple of questionable sections. Months later, I had put in a few equipment to turn my basement into a home gym and exercised quite frequently. Sooner or later the thought of asbestos kept creeping up in my mind, so I started doing extensive research on it and here are my findings and what I had to do to remove it.

Asbestos comes in a wide variety of products (you can read up more here) but for the most part about 95% of asbestos in the United States are of type chrysotile. Chrysotile were added in joint compound, roofing materials, brake pads and in my case insulation. Asbestos are considered indestructible because they can withstand heat of up to 2750 C/4982 F so it made sense to put them in products that can potentially save lives.

Here are some photos of what I wanted removed:





The photos above is about 56 linear feet of AirCell corrugated asbestos insulation which contains chrysotile. The joints are also asbestos plaster.

Older homes built before the 80s (my home was built 1942) most likely contain asbestos (this is called Presumed Asbestos-Containing Material or PACM). So if your looking at a questionable material that you think might contain asbestos, most likely it is and you'd treat it as if it was. When an asbestos fiber gets passed through all your body's defenses (your nose hair, mucous, saliva, lung's cilia) and get's lodged into the lung tissue, it stays there forever! Think of them as microscopic arrows. Once lodged, the body constantly gets inflamed and over time about 10-40 years a type of cancer called mesothelieoma develops if not cancer asbestosis.

Chrysotile is definitely a dangerous material to work with so a professional should be considered. The government prefers that the ACM is left in place and not disturbed because it's very likely the fibers will be released into the air when removed. There are no laws that prevent the homeowner from removing ACM from their home but there are many for everything else and if you hire a professional, all laws apply. You'd have to check your local jurisdiction to make sure.

Maybe I can take this on myself?

Removing is quite easy, enclose the area, seal openings, wear coverall and proper respirator, spray the ACM with soap and water, remove, toss into a 6 mil bag, clean up using a HEPA vacuum, dispose of all poly into 6 mil bags and take to a landfill that accepts it.

This sounds too easy right? well your right. It's definitely possible for a DIY project so let's consider our options.

Option 1: Rewettable canvas pipe lagging

EPA and other government agencies will most likely prefer this route. This is a canvas material that is applied wet and is wrapped around the asbestos insulation so that it is enclosed in a hard shell. I seriously thought of going this route so I purchased 5 yards for $50. Once I received it, it took me a few days until I realized I didn't feel comfortable with asbestos still lingering in my basement.... which led me to option 2.

Option 2: DIY removal

Let's see, first I have to quantify the materials needed for this project:

• 6 mil (required) polyethylene sheeting which runs ~ $20 x 3 = $60
• 6 mil (required) contractor bags ~ $25/15 count * 2 (safer to have extras) = $50
• 3' glove bags (decided not to use, won't fit in some areas) ~ $12 each
• Surfactant (soap and water, can be made using baby shampoo)
• Coverall kit, respirator, eyewear, gloves ~ $28 * 2 (extra just in case) = $56
• Respirator refills set ~ $7 each
• Disposal fee (free in my town)
• Poly duct tape $6 each * 3 = $18
• Air sampling 

I had to pause here because this is an important one. The numbers I have here are estimates from some contractors I received quotes from. First off, there are two type of air sampling that can be done. The first and cheaper one is called Phase Contrast Microscopy ($35/each) which is just a count of fibers on a filter from an air pump. The lab will zoom into a portion of the filter and will count the fibers in that area. The second which is more expensive is called Transmission Electron Microscopy ($80/each) or TEM, this is the most accurate way of determining if any asbestos fibers were released in the air. When TEM is analyzed in a lab they will burn the sample and whatever remains will be asbestos fibers then they do a count of that.

It's still possible to do the air sampling myself but who am I kidding, I'd have to get maybe 3 pumps for 1-2 days and run them all 3 times? not worth it. If I hired an air monitor they most likely will not agree because they will simple consider working with a DIYer too risky. Let's continue the list.

• Pullman-Holt HEPA vacuum ~ $320

I might get away with a shopvac/HEPA filter attached to it... but these vacs are not air tight and are way too powerful to keep things contained. As a side note HEPA filters are not cheap; a HEPA CleanStream filter go for about $37 each.

Also, I'd like to point out why HEPA filters are needed when dealing with asbestos fibers.

An asbestos fiber range from 0.7 - 90 microns (invisible to the naked eye) and a HEPA filter will capture 0.3 microns.

Next up...

• Negative air machine ~ $800

I'm sure this can be rented but I didn't bother checking, it is quite an expensive machine but necessary. Having a negative air machine will assure that anything that's release in the air during the abatement will be filtered and will prevent the fibers from going to other places.

• Muscle

This isn't a one man job, it will require at least 2 for the inexperienced. I can ask my brother to help me out on this but I'd be risking his health if anything goes wrong.

At this point, my head was aching, it didn't seem like something I wanted to involve myself with even  for an advanced DIYer having built a kitchen, bathroom and have done big repairs around the house. This headache led me to..

Option 3: Hire a professional

Ok so I admitted defeat, the only choice left for me was to hire a professional even with all the bad experience I've had. If the job was smaller maybe 3-5 linear feet, I would do it myself, but this thing was 56LF and also required a section of chicken wire plaster to be torn down to get to a hidden pipe.

I started calling/email to get quotes from licensed abatement contractors. Believe it or not the abatement industry is quite small I was able to get a list from labor.ny.gov. You can also use a map I created that uses this data to find a licensed abatement contractor near you below (the filter is the button on the top left side).

The best quote I received for 56LF was neither the lowest or the highest. It was $2000 for abatement/removal and disposal and $500 for the air monitor, which was a separate company that was referred to me, that would sample before, during and post abatement using PCM, more for TCM (always keep the abatement and air monitor separate so that there is no conflict of interest). I went with PCM to keep the cost down and was told it was used often in residential but if I had to do it again, I'd go with TCM.

After settling on a contractor I made an appointment so that we could finalize on the job and start date. The contractor was impressed that I had moved all of the stuff the weekend before so that it was easy to setup the abatement area and maybe the reason why he lowered his quote to $1700. It would only take 1 day for this job so I took off from work on a Thursday and Friday just in case for any cleaning/moving I had to do afterwards.

Continue reading...Asbestos Abatement Part 2: Contractor Day