We have to be truthful and say that when we bought our house we did not consider the amount of Artex used throughout the property! We got caught up in how much we liked the location, the potential of the site etc and didn’t look at the place as forensically as we would do if we were helping a client. It seems odd but the emotional attachment of a house move definitely takes over if you let it (something for us to remind ourselves of when moving next).
Despite this potential problem we do love the house and we now look at asbestos removal as merely a step we have to consider before looking to make changes, albeit a potentially expensive step.
Our Before House Tour Video shows you more of the offending Artex throughout the house and gives you an idea of the internal alterations and extension we have planned in the future.
The Artex in our house steadily became a major source of paranoia for us as the months, following our house move, went by. The worry of harming ourselves and our daughter’s health plus a looming bill to rectify it if there was indeed Asbestos present did keep us awake on more than one occasion. This caused us to act well before we are ready to disturb any walls or ceilings.
Our first port of call was to learn more about the subject and to source local experts on removal. This involved typing questions such as “What is Asbestos?” “Why is it dangerous?” “Where does it reside in the house?” “What do you do if you find it”. The more informed we were the less panicked we became which was comforting. The next step was to get quotes from 3 local companies.
We found this process to be time consuming and without criticising a particular company in public, we will warn you that the level of detail required before a quotation is considered can be extensive so be prepared to answer lots of questions about your property. It is not simply a case of leaving your name and contact details and where you want tested for some companies.
We are being a bit harsh as we totally understand the better the information given the more relevant the quote, however, we thought close to 40 questions to fill in was a bit excessive in one instance.
We ended up going with JAX Asbestos Specialists as they seemed to understand the nature of our enquiry and they responded quickly and concisely plus the price was very reasonable. We would be happy to share the varying quote prices to our clients should they require this information ahead of their own testing.
JAX agreed to come out to take samples of 5 areas within our house. The hall walls, living room ceiling, bathroom ceiling, our master bedroom and Luna’s bedroom.
At the outset, we were made aware that depending on the type of renovation work that's being done to the property, we may actually be better with an ‘Asbestos Refurbishment Survey Report’ which provides further detail and gives you a full report for any contractors to refer to. However, we decided that as the main works affect only one wall, we would be cheaper to get only the sampling done at the moment. Then if the wall turns out to have an asbestos coating, we would go back to get a quote to remove it prior to any works.
We arranged a mutual date for JAX to come out and they arrived on time and they set up outside putting on all the proper PPE before entering the property which we admired as we have heard of instances of other companies taking a more relaxed approach shall we say.
The sampling took about half an hour and the guys said we would be issued with an invoice and sent the results within the coming days. Fast forward 24 hours and we had our results and we were delighted with the outcome, “No Asbestos Detected” for each of the 5 samples! Furthermore, the ‘Certificate of Analysis for Bulk Identification’ we were given is great to hold onto for any contractors we are going to use, so that was great.
Useful Asbestos Information
Rather than give you a guide on what Asbestos is and talk about its dangers we feel it wise to leave that to the experts by linking a few websites instead:
JAX Asbestos Specialists You can find information on the company we chose, asbestos and read customer case studies by visiting their site.
The HSE website will give you comprehensive Asbestos information. The site gives guidance to all tradesmen, public, building owners, tenants and licensed asbestos contractors.
For further reading we also liked Asbestos.com (albeit it is an American site so UK readers should be mindful of that when reading).