Vinyl Tiles - Asbestos...

redsheeps

Not DIY but sort of is.

Had lads in to do a job in the house. There were old vinyl tiles in one room that they said needed to come up to do the job and they just started pulling them up themselves straight away (they had no masks, gloves, eye wear...just the clothes they arrived in). Almost all of them came off as solid tiles. There was no power tool use, just a hand scraper. Some split in places as they were being lifted. They are likely to have been laid down in 1979 so am assuming there's a high chance they are asbestos containing tiles. They had them up and binned in their own bin in under 15 minutes and removed them all out of the house themselves. No water or damp covering was used whilst being removed.

From what I could see the tiles were non-friable - none of them broke up into any kind of dust or anything - they stayed solid though some were split/torn when trying to lift them. When they were being lifted there was little adhesive left on the cement floor underneath - it seemed like the adhesive came off with the tiles - but there are small patches of solid as a rock adhesive left on the cement floor and my understanding is that this old adhesive could also contain asbestos.

Annoyingly I ended up sweeping up the floor after they were done (won't bother explaining why) and this raised some greyish dust which at the time just reminded me of the dust raised in our garage floor which is just cement floor. It wasn't thick with dust, just a light haze around knee level was visible briefly. I was wearing a KN95 (not N95) mask doing this but I've read that if there was asbestos then I've raised the dust into the air which can take 72 hours to settle and even then you can just raise it again from moving through the house. After I was done sweeping there was a fine layer of grey dust on items in the room which I wiped down twice with damp cloths.

I'm beyond p*ssed off as I'm well aware of asbestos but for whatever feckin reason it just didn't dawn on me. We had others quote for the job and although they saw the tiles and said they'd need to come up none of them mentioned anything about them possibly being asbestos tiles, they all just said "ah yeah they'll need to come up" and one fellah quoting just pulled one up with his fingers to check how easy it was to lift them.

Would there be less chance that there's been asbestos raised into the air given that the tiles and adhesive appeared to be non-friable?

There are two small pieces of the tiles (2cm in size) that are still stuck to the ground. Could anyone recommend a company I could send a sample of the tiles to check if they contain asbestos? I know the damage is done at this stage so I'm 50:50 on whether it's worth finding out.

Esel

Never heard of asbestos tiles tbh.

Are you sure they were ever a thing?

deadlybuzzman

As it happens only a few days ago I got talking to a guy that's one of the higher ups on an big council estate regeneration project and this subject came up.

Years back I was pricing for redoing a floor in a house and I was advised from my company's technical dept to walk away from the job as the tiles that I thought were PVC were probably asbestos.

So I asked the guy working on the regeneration project about it and he said yes theyy probably were asbestos but then he got v technical on the grades of asbestos so he seemed to know his stuff.

His main point was that it's the fibrous dusty asbestos that you need to worry about not the solid form found in tiles. Also that dust will be from the old adhesive

xhomelezz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118130200#Comment_118130200

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.asbestos123.com/news/how-to-recognize-asbestos-floor-tiles/amp/

i didn't know either, but it existed and probably plenty of houses still have them

redsheeps

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118130942#Comment_118130942

I feel slightly reassured by my reading that seems to match with what that person was saying. The tiles seem to be viewed as the least potentially dangerous as the asbestos seems to stay locked into the tiles and really only drilling/grinding into them causes a release.

With the adhesive, it looks similar but not exactly like a lot of the pictures of the black mastic (asbestos containing) adhesive I have seen online. The texture and appearance seems more like opaque glass and the bits of adhesive that remained on the cement floor aren't flaky or crumbly - they are solid as a rock and remain stuck to the floor. After the tiles came up the floor I'd say is 90% cement floor and 10% remnants of the black adhesive, and this is when I swept up, so I'm really hoping I haven't raised too much of it.

The stress of it is 90 😫

e.r

old imperial 9 inch tiles have Abestos in them.

if your tiles were 300x300 your fine generally pvc.

the black bitumen adhesive is only dangerous if you sand it making it airborne, scraping heavy spots is fine.

you can incapsulate the adhesive with a good latex smoothing compound making it inert.

redsheeps

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118166460#Comment_118166460

Forgive my measurements being a bit OTT on this, they were 295x295, so assume they're essentially the 300x300?

My reading suggests that the asbestos tiles were most commonly sold in 9"x9" and 12"x12", so with 12" equating to 305x305 is that more likely to suggest they were the non-asbestos PVC? Taking potential nominal measurement into account, are they still likely to not be asbestos given they are 295x295?

The adhesive wasn't sanded, just a scraper used to get under the tiles to lift them and most came up without much effort.