We are so glad to see the asbestos siding go. It looked awful. We can see what the house is going to look like and that is very exciting, on the other hand it is going to take a lot of work to get there…
Today is the big day. The asbestos siding is coming off the house right now. The abatement guys are in their haz-mat suits and there is yellow caution tape all around our house. The noise of them taking off the asbestos shingles is louder than I expected, lots of banging. I can’t go outside yet (obviously) to see what condition the original wood siding underneath is in. I am just hoping that the original wood is fine and it won’t need to be replaced. Fingers crossed!
The cost of disposing of large quantities of asbestos in Los Angeles is so expensive that we actually saved money by having the siding removed and disposed of by a professional company. We went with Fresh Air Environmental Services Inc. out of Commerce, CA.
Update
Oh, dear lord…the abatement guys knocked on my door after they were finished and said sorry. Sorry? The condition of our original clapboard siding looked pretty shabby to them. They know we are restoring the house and I think they felt sorry for us. There is a gaping hole in the side of our house next to where our upstairs bathroom is. Why? Maybe that is how someone got the original clawfoot bath tub out, other than that it is anyone’s guess?
I immediately went outside and started pulling the black paper off the house. The front and side of our house that faces the street look pretty good. Not great but not in the sorry realm. Although, the gaping hole in the South side of our house and bobbled back porch addition is pretty sorry. I am not prepared to deal with the condition of our wood any more today because I am afraid upon further inspection I will discover plenty to be sorry about. I keep wondering, “How much? How much is this going to cost us?”
I have a work deadline that is due at the end of the day today but am finding it hard to concentrate. I support our house by doing freelance graphic design work. Our friend Jeff stopped by and wanted me to touch up his acting photographs. I am on the phone with David at the same time, “No, there is a hole, a huge friggin’ hole on the side of our house. What do you mean what type of hole? The type of hole with no wood over it! It looks like birds can fly into our house.”
In the midst of all this Simon was left upstairs by himself and forgotten until I heard him tumbling down the stairs and landing at the bottom with a yip and a thud. Oh, the guilt! He was rushed to the vet. He has a sprained front leg but nothing is broken. I am supposed to keep him quiet for the next few days, easier said than done.
I thought I had prepared myself for whatever was waiting underneath the asbestos. I told everyone I was hoping for the best while preparing for the worst. Even though we have ended up somewhere in between, the eternal optimist in me feels disappointed, ok, crushed is closer to it. I am always hopeful that one project will go easily like it does on all those television home improvement shows. You know, the ones where they re-do a house in 4 days or something like that. We will be lucky to be finished 4 years!
Today, Kevin from Fresh Air Environmental Services Inc. came over to look at the asbestos insulation covering our original heating ducts and register returns. His advice? Leave the asbestos alone. He assured me that as long as asbestos is well sealed in the walls it will do no harm. He felt that our asbestos was in good shape. This surprised me because it appeared to be in bad shape to me, with little tears here and there. He said once the heat duct was sealed back up in the wall that it would be nothing to worry about.
We had covered the asbestos with duct tape and he said that was fine and it would encapsulate it, although state regulations would not allow them to use duct tape. I showed him the register returns which had most concerned me because the edges had asbestos that were exposed to the room. After discovering the register vents were wrapped in asbestos on the outside, I sprayed expandable foam around the edges where the vents meet the wall to seal in the asbestos. Kevin seemed to be impressed with my solution and said that they use a lot of expandable foam on their jobs and that was a fine way to prevent exposure to asbestos.
He checked how the new register vents were connecting into the old asbestos ones and said that seemed to be ok, too. Kevin said that he felt we had nothing to worry about. He said we could remove the register vents and heat ducts if we chose to, but his recommendation was to leave everything alone. This surprised me coming from a licensed abatement contractor. I thought he would have suggested removal, if for no other reason than to make some money.
Everything that I had been reading on the internet about asbestos had scared me but Kevin pointed out that asbestos isn’t radio active, it’s not going to jump off the walls and into my lungs. Abatement humor.
We also discussed removing the asbestos shingles from the outside of our house. We will probably have Kevin back in a few months to do that.
Update
We got the lab results back today. The insulation on the heat ducts and register vents is 50 – 60% asbestos. The exterior shingles contain only 10-15% asbestos by comparison. The results are unsettling to me. Will we ever be able to encapsulate the asbestos well enough in the walls so that it does no harm? Are we being stupid by not having it removed or is removing it an unnecessary expense that could potentially release more fibers into the air during removal (even by professionals)? It makes my lungs hurt just thinking about it.