Hidden Hazards: Navigating Asbestos Safely

Jamie: 00:00:01

Welcome to Thoughts from the Crawl Space, a podcast where our goal as home inspection experts is to support and serve our community.

Whether you're a homeowner, home buyer, real estate agent, or investor, we believe everyone deserves solutions to their homeownership challenges and inspiration along the way. Your path to success starts here. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Thoughts from the Crawl Space.

Today we're going to talk about an environmental topic that may be pertinent to those of you that are looking to buy a house that's a little bit older, or maybe you live in one now that's a little bit older and you're concerned about what might be hanging around that could affect your health. So before you panic about that old pipe wrap in your basement, let's talk about asbestos.

What is it, where you'll find it, and what homeowners really need to know about it before buying or renovating a home. It's probably almost more pertinent if you're renovating than just if you're buying the home. So let's jump in. What exactly is asbestos?

was used heavily between the: 1930

You want to seal the ductwork, and so you would wrap this material or the pipes in this material so that you would have good insulation and it would be highly fire resistant.

So it was found in a variety of materials, insulation, floor tile, ceiling tiles, siding, ductwork, ductwork wrap, popcorn ceilings, and even some joint compound. Now perhaps you have one of those homes that has popcorn ceilings. We'll touch on in just a little bit on what to do about that.

piles were used up even until: 1988

So if you have a home that was built, let's say, in the 80s, chances are your popcorn ceilings may have asbestos in those.

So why it's a concern when disturbed microscopic fibers get airborne and you breathe them in and it can cause serious long term health issues like mesothelioma or lung disease. And that's why we want to take care of it and we want to know how to avoid problems associated with it.

So common places that asbestos hides and this is when you know what to look for. It's pretty obvious to see.

So some of the first things you can look at is pipe insulation and Boiler wraps, especially a white or gray cloth looking material, probably the most that you'll see it would be on boiler lines. Now I mentioned previously, that is a very good insulator and that's why it was used. You want to have as an efficient boiler setup as you can.

So boilers usually in the basement and water lines are going throughout the house to radiators to heat the house. And this helps to keep the heat so the boiler doesn't continually have to work to keep the water hot. The insulation would help to do that.

But these lines, over time they get frayed. You'll see fibers hanging down, you'll see chunks of the insulation hanging down. And those are likely asbestos containing fibers and insulation.

And so if we see it and it's in a really good shape, we're not as likely to say much about it other than notify you that you have those kind of materials.

But if it does have a, if it's in a poor shape or it's tearing or falling apart, it's subject to being damaged or, or you know, a kid running by it and swinging at it or whatever and things could get airborne, then it's more of a health concern.

So pipe insulation and boiler wraps are probably the, the most common things that we would see that may have asbestos in Another one is 9 by 9 inch floor tiles or older sheet vinyl with felt backing. This is a very telltale sign in homes that have nine by nine floor tiles. More modern tiles, even vinyl tiles are going to be 12 by 12.

And this wasn't necessarily just limited to 9 by 9, but in general that was where you would see it.

And so if you go into your basement or laundry room or wherever this may be and you see 9 inch by 9 inch floor tiles, even if they're in good shape, the materials themselves could have asbestos in it and the adhesive that they would use to secure these to the floor could have asbestos in it. So we'll talk in a little bit again about what to do about that and what not to do about that.

Another area, as we mentioned previously, popcorn or textured ceilings from mid century homes, 50, 60, 70, even as I mentioned up into the 80s, popcorn ceiling. Now what happens when popcorn ceilings start drying out? They start falling down.

And so anything like that, we don't want to get it airborne, we want it to be in good shape. And so when we talk about the remediation, we'll discuss that as well.

Another area that you might see it is cement siding, shingles or roofing materials. We've seen it in both, we call it what we call cement siding is very common on older homes. It's. It's brittle. If it's in good shape, great.

But the problem is inevitably something gets hit, it gets broken. You can't find replacements to match. If you want to sight over it, you're going to have to remove it, most likely because it's so brittle.

And so you got what we call cement, asbestos siding, or even there's some roofing materials that would contain that.

And so those are usually when you see it in roofing materials, not always, but typically you're going to look on your roof and it's going to almost look like a diamond pattern up there. Now, those could be also slate tiles. It wouldn't just always be cement or be asbestos, but you just don't know on some of these until it gets tested.

So. And then another very common area is H vac duct insulation.

So we talked about boiler lines earlier, and this will just be like the air ducts that furnaces use. And mainly you would see this at the seam where the different sections are connected, or it's more likely to leak air.

But you could see it around the entire duct too. Sometimes H vac technicians went a little overboard and just covered the whole thing and sealed it all together.

Well, that kind of tape and that kind of wrap is a material that is known to contain asbestos. So in your basement, you could potentially have boiler lines.

If you have a boiler that are completely wrapped, you could have H vac ductwork that has especially the seams that are covered in it. And you could have the floor tiles, the 9 by 9 inch floor tiles that have a problem.

And you could almost all, almost have popcorn ceilings down there as well. So the last area that we find it, and it's. It's pretty common in homes built in the 50s and 60s. And that is in the insulation in the attic.

Now, this is a type of insulation called vermiculite. Vermiculite was a granular type insulation that was a mined product. In other words, it got out of the ground.

I believe it was out in Utah, possibly Nevada, one of those two. And the problem is it was mined next to an asbestos mine and those would get contaminated.

And so there is a possibility that some of the vermiculite you have in your attic contains asbestos. And so very common to see up there. Generally, you're only going to see about three inches of vermiculite.

That's just kind of the insulation standard that they adhered to in the 60s and 70s. And so that is something that you would see.

you have a home built before: 1980

So a home inspector can't confirm asbestos, only a lab testing it can. And this is especially true in something like vermiculite. Vermiculite.

They say the odds of you having asbestos in your vermiculite insulation is roughly 50, 50. We certainly can't identify it by looking at it. So we're going to take a sample of that and send it into a lab.

If the home buyer, or you as the homeowner want us to do that, we can identify suspect materials.

I've just mentioned several suspect materials, and those are insulation, floor tiles, ceiling tiles, siding, ductwork, wrap, popcorn ceilings, and joint compound.

So those kind of things, we see them in a house, we know the age of the house, we know there's potential that it contains asbestos, and we may recommend testing for you. So you have that peace of mind that either it doesn't have it or you know it does, but you know what to do about it to make it safe, safe.

So we recommend testing at all times to give that peace of mind. So it's also important as the home inspector, to note the condition of it. We mentioned before, the main problem with it is that it gets airborne.

It gets airborne, you breathe that in, it gets in, the air system in the house circulates, and constantly you're getting exposed to that. So we want to look at materials that are intact and sealed or materials that are torn or damaged and need work. All right? We don't want.

Usually asbestos is safe if it's left alone, but if it's damaged or friable, which means airborne, able to be airborne, we're going to note that as a potential hazard. So our job isn't to cause panic. It's to provide awareness so buyers can make informed decisions.

So you know what it is, you know where it hides, you know what an inspector's role is. What should you do about it? And maybe more important, what shouldn't you do about it?

First of all, by far, the number one recommendation from the Environmental Protection Agency is to leave it alone. If it's not damaged, you have it in the attic, you have it on ductwork, you have it on floor, floor tiles. Best thing you can do, leave it alone.

Okay, if that's not an option for you, if it's damaged, if you just want it out of your house, then you need to hire a professional. So use professionals for sampling first to confirm it or removal.

We would not recommend you do this because whenever you remove something, if it's not done with proper protocols, you do get things that are airborne and that is the last thing that you want. And if you are buying an older home, this is a good place to budget for removal or remediation.

Whatever they do, removal would be obviously taking it out of the house. Remediation would potentially be sealing it in place.

So what they'll do, typically on remediation, so we touched on this before with regard to popcorn, ceilings, et cetera, et cetera. If something's in good shape and you just want it taken care of or remediated, they can just seal it in place.

So if you have wrap on your ductwork, they'll come and they'll put a mastic material around it. I've even seen folks take silver tape and wrap it around.

But you want to get a professional remediator that knows the right kind of remediation for it and just seals it in place. What's that going to do?

Well, it's not going to allow anything to become airborne and it'll hold it in place and you won't have anything to worry about at a fraction of the cost of what it would cost to remove it. So here's some don'ts. Don't try to scrape sand or tear out suspect materials yourself. Why we just talked about it's going to get airborne.

Vacuum, don't vacuum or sweep up the dust. That's just going to spread it around even more.

So you can see a theme here is that you don't want this to become airborne and you want to keep things sealed in place. So let's talk number five. Well, first of all, you know, an inspector.

An inspector's take, a calm, informed response is also always safer than a DIY panic project. Right? Just because you're trying to save some money, you could turn something small into something big and cause health problems as well.

So segment five, cost and remediation. Typically, testing costs a few hundred dollars per sample, not a huge expense. Last week we did an inspection. They had vermiculite.

We took a few samples of it, we sent it to a lab, and I believe for three samples, it's like $300 and some dollars. So roughly $100 a sample and we can get results back in just a few days.

So removal or encapsulation on the Other hand can range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars, depending on extent and location. So if you've had vermiculite insulation, best thing to do, again, leave it alone. You can add insulation over the top of it.

Now, the one thing you might want to think about is if you renovate or if you want to add lighting to the ceilings. Remember, houses that have vermiculite typically don't have a lot of overhead lighting. You don't have any holes in the ceiling.

So if you want to create one up there, or you're going to have electricians digging through your attic, running wires and drilling holes, they're not going to want that vermiculite up there. So in that case, it's probably going to need to be removed before anything can be safely done.

I've even seen mold remediation companies who go in there with full PPE respirators, everything for mold removal will not do mold removal until the asbestos is removed out of an attic. So that is some consideration that you should have regarding this issue.

So with remediation of vermiculite, there's nothing you can really remediate other than remove it or leave it and put something over the top of it, like more insulation. With popcorn ceilings, you've probably seen that the HGTV shows where they're removing it. They wet it down first. Why do they wet it?

Well, they're going to wet it. One, to make it a little softer and two, so when they remove it and they're scraping it, there's no dust.

And because the dust is where you breathe in, obviously. So they're going to scrape it, take a wide knife like a drywall knife and just scrape it right off the ceiling, collect it and take it out. All right.

As always, when you hire a removal company, they need to be certified on doing this and have proper precautions for disposing of it. So you want to make sure of that.

So if you have floor tiles, the nine by nine floor tiles, I've seen many times where home buyers will want new flooring, which is legit because this is old, could be 50 years, 60 years old, you can put carpet laminate flooring right over the top of it. The problem is if you try to remove it and if you want to remove it again, I've seen a wet it down and use a scraper and scrape it up.

But there's a risk involved with that. So just know what's going on with the different materials. If you have ductwork and you have wrap on it have someone come in, seal it in place.

Especially if it's on a water line, you seal it in place, there's really nothing to worry about from there on out.

So it just depends on the type of material, how much of it you have, the condition that it's in, how you're going to use the house, and what truly concerns you.

If you have children in the house and they're going to be running around and doing things children do and pulling on things and ripping on things and banging into things, you don't want that to be an option for them. So you're going to want to make your house as secure as possible in that case. So sometimes encapsulation is the safer, more affordable option.

So in closing, asbestos doesn't mean a home is unsafe, it just means it's older. Like anything else in a house, knowledge and maintenance make all the difference. So don't let fear drive your decisions, let facts guide it.

So give us a call if we can help you out anyway with any information, any advice sampling names of folks that might remediate it or remove it. We don't do that, but we can certainly help you out in that regard. So thanks for listening.

Pass this on to all your friends as well, especially ones that have old houses, and we'll talk to you next time. Thank you for listening.

This week you can catch up on the latest episode of the Thoughts from the Crawl Space podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube. For more information about Gold Key Inspection services, go to goldkeyinspect.com.