Adventures of Home Ownership: Asbestos Abatement Part 2: Contractor Day

Come Thursday the removal guys arrive at 9am sharp. I accompany the two guys to the basement to do a walk through and point out the chicken wire plaster and all of the asbestos insulation that had to be removed. The supervisor gives me a quick overview of what will be done and his associate gets ready to build the poly tent. A poly tent is just an enclosure made from poly sheeting; it can be multiple tents or a large one that would enclose the entire area.

The air monitor arrives about half an hour later who complained about traffic. He pulls out 6 air pumps so that he can sample a baseline of the current air condition. The first 3 pumps were located in the abatement area and the other 3 were located on the main level (kitchen, dining room and living room). He runs the pumps for about a couple of hours until the removal guys were done setting up the tent.

The supervisor and I go downstairs to check the completed tent and gave me their strategy on the removal and also answered any other questions I had.

My observations:

The air monitor had already swapped the cartridge on the air pumps to monitor the air during abatement along with the replacement of the other 3 on the main floor.
There were some areas that were hard to reach it seems and that was outside the tent. The supervisor told me that once the main area was done he would then continue to the more difficult sections. A cutout of the poly would be done and he would reach in, water the insulation then pry off the insulation with a bag on the other hand.
They had a negative air machine running inside the abatement area, exhausting the filtered air outside through a poly tube.
There was a small decontamination chamber also made from poly and studs that will be used when the remover changes from his coveralls to street clothes.

Tube ending from the negative air machine.

The third hour approaching, the remover suits up and begins work. The supervisor goes outside to assist whenever needed.

Shouldn't there be two removers?
That was exactly my thought, it turns out the supervisor was there to make sure the process goes smoothly. The remover, from what I was told, was very experienced and didn't need help so two workers were not necessary to remove the insulation.

Fast forward, I take my lunch and notice the supervisor cleaning up his van and the air monitor is sleeping in his car while the remover is hard at work downstairs. I step outside and decided to chat with the supervisor for a while and here's what I learned about the abatement industry.

It's a small industry.
Workers who work for licensed handlers (usually owners of the company) aren't licensed themselves.
Licensed handlers have to pay big for health insurance due to the hazardous nature of the business.
Workers tend to work for several licensed handlers throughout the year.
There is usually no work during the winter months of November-February. During this time they go on vacation and don't come back till February. Once they hit the ground on the tarmac they begin to call their contacts for work.
Workers will always go for a longer term job, such as work at schools or businesses and will only favor smaller jobs if work is slow or easy.
Workers pick and choose who they want to work with because they would rather work with people they like.

In about 1.5 hours the remover was done. The air monitor goes downstairs and requests for his air pumps and gathers his other 3 pumps and brings them back into his car. He tells me hes heading to a lab in midtown and will take no longer than 40 minutes and will then call to give clearance (that the abatement area is below regulation limits).

What about post air sampling?
The answer I got was, "it's not really needed for a small job like this." I figured, he might be right, after all, the abated area was sealed and the fibers would probably not seek it's way into the main floor and besides I had two large HEPA air purifiers running on turbo the entire time. If we receive a green light from the lab, then all is well right?

The business owner arrives to exchange the invoice with my check for $1700 then heads off to another project (good to be a business owner right?)

The remover, comes out of my dungeon with sweat on his back and steadily gulping down a bottle of water then smiles and says, "it's done."

Having good hospitality manners, I ordered 2 boxes of pizza for them while we wait for the clearance.

We chit-chat for about an hour about New York and how it was back in the early 90s and the gentrification that is happening around us.

The supervisor decides to call the air monitor, the air monitor states that he's at the lab awaiting results and will call back in 10-15 minutes.

About 10-15 minutes still no callback, the supervisor calls back again and the air monitor states that he "meant" to call back that the results were negative.

I tell the supervisor, "how do we know the air monitor is telling the truth?" he replies back, "we don't, we just have to trust in the remover and his abilities that everything was done properly." As I said before, abatement workers pick their teammates and trust them so the supervisor is confident the remover did a good job, but understands that there might still be fibers in the air in which we really cannot tell until the actual reports come back from the lab which would be completed the following day.

A large truck came by to pick up the hazardous materials.

I grab my 3M asbestos respirator that I purchased and headed downstairs (the supervisor and remover did not have respirators, to show confidence?), surely I wasn't taking chances until I receive the report. Everything looked clean and the remover even sprayed on some white adhesive paint which I was told was required in the previous law but no longer. He did it just to be safe that the fibers don't come off the pipes if any.