What To Know About Getting An Asbestos Inspection Before You Renovate Your Basement
If you plan to convert your basement into a man cave for watching TV and playing cards on the weekends, the first step is to think about dealing with asbestos before you start swinging the hammer. Asbestos was used in all kinds of building materials decades ago, so if you have an older home, it probably has asbestos somewhere. The problem is that you can't find it by looking for it. You'll need to get an asbestos inspection from a qualified contractor. Here are some things to know about getting the inspection.
Why An Asbestos Inspection Is Necessary
It's impossible to tell where asbestos is in your basement. It might be in old insulation in the walls or around pipes. If the basement is partially finished, it could be in the old flooring. Asbestos was used in everything from siding to insulation because it is a fire resistant material. You don't want to demolish a wall or floor without knowing if it contains asbestos. If asbestos is left undisturbed, it poses no harm. It's only when the material is cut, broken, or scraped that tiny asbestos particles float into the air where you inhale them. Inhaling asbestos can lead to mesothelioma, which is a type of cancer.
It is not worth the health risk to demolish building materials that contain asbestos. It's even against the law to do it yourself, and contractors are required to follow strict procedures when removing asbestos from a home. Another reason to get an asbestos inspection before and after you renovate your basement is so you have documentation your home is safe when you put it on the market for sale some day.
How An Inspection Is Done
An asbestos inspector knows where asbestos is most likely to be found in your basement, so he or she will take physical samples from those materials. For instance, a small portion of insulation may be cut out and sent to a lab. Also, air samples might be taken. These pick up on circulating asbestos that might be coming from an unknown source. The inspector follows strict procedures for obtaining the samples so no fibers waft into the air. The samples are sent to a lab to be analyzed, so the results aren't immediate. If the material is found in air samples, further testing may be needed to pinpoint the source. Also, you may need repeat testing once your renovations are complete.
What To Do About The Results
If you're overwhelmed about the thought of dealing with asbestos, there's no need to panic. In many cases, you can renovate a space without disturbing the material. For instance, if you have old asbestos tiles on the floor and the tiles are not cracked or falling apart, you can cover them with new flooring such as sheet vinyl that covers up the asbestos so it can't get into the air. You can also cover old asbestos insulation by wrapping it with new insulation to seal it in place. An asbestos contractor can advise you on how to deal with the materials in your basement that contain asbestos. In some situations, the safest thing might be to hire a removal expert to get it out of your house and then you won't have to worry about it. The advantage to removing asbestos is that you're free to make any changes to the space you want rather than being limited by working around the dangerous material.
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